That Maimuni prez zimata (Monkeys in Winter) won the national award for the best film of the year 2006 either says something about Milena Andonova’s first full-length feature or about the Bulgarian film industry. Given the acclaim it has received abroad, the more likely scenario is that the film spoke to people, and they responded.

Released in cinemas on February 9, it is not yet clear how the general Bulgarian public is taking it. Andonova can say one thing, though – it’s better to see it on the big screen. Monkeys in Winter tells the searching stories of three unconnected young women during three periods in Bulgaria’s history: Dona (the pop-folk singer Boni), a poor gypsy woman in the 1960s who is looking for security in love, but only finds hurt and numerous pregnancies from different men; Lucretia (the Sfumato theatre actress Diana Dobreva), a determined law student in the 1980s with a will to succeed, but who needs to learn to balance this with love; and Tana (the Mladezhki Theatre actress Angelina Slavova), a young-married woman in 2001, who has a beautiful home life, but whose husband is impotent, causing her much distress.

“Maimuni prez zimata is very current for me,” Andonova says over a cappuccino and mineral water, the Saturday morning after her film was released. “It comes from a specific time – it has many relatable heroines. It deals with the problems of personal responsibility.

Everyone wants to be happy, and tries to find this. My girls also do this.”

She explains that they dealt with the question of how to realise the ideas that they have in their heads. This, she hopes, would drive the spectators to also think of their own futures.

“This is a big problem in Bulgaria now,” she says, the guilt for what has happened and what happens now in this country. “People have to realise that they cannot just blame others for the problems in society. When you ask what they want, they say: ‘Reduced taxes, prepazeni stuckla.’ When they drive in these old nasty taxis…” Basically, if people don’t like something, they should stop complaining, and do something about it themselves.

This is the idea she invokes through her three main characters.

Andonova also believes that women have a bigger responsibility to society, as they are the ones who raise up the next generations.

As a mother herself, Andonova explains that “the first seven years of a child’s life depends on the mother – how the child will look at the world, its upbringing, its beliefs” comes primarily from this female model.

“It’s not to say that men do not have responsibility,” she clarifies. “We all do.”

In addition to the best film award it received at the January 13 National Film Centre awards ceremony, Monkeys in Winter also won the top award at the Zlatna roza (Golden Rose) festival in Varna last summer, and the Best Eastern European Film award at the Karlovy Vary International Film Festival.

At the latter, there were two tracks: one called East of the West, in which 17 films from Eastern Europe competed, and then the general international track, which had 15 films. “The films were much stronger, more interesting, there was a larger diversity, there was life, what” in East of the West, whereas films in the other category were just mediocre, without the searching, themes, contradictions that were found in films from the former socialist countries, she said.

Before Monkeys in Winter, Andonova, who studied under Georgi Djulgerov, Hristo Hristov and Mladen Kiselov at NATFIZ, graduating with a degree in directing, had written one screenplay, in 1996. It told the fictitious story of an opera singer, recently graduated from university, who could not find work. So, she joins some Bulgarians whose work is going abroad to drive used cars – bought, stolen, found – back to Bulgaria. This won her a stipend for a three- or four-month-long session at the Berlin Nipkow Programm, where she reviewed instruction and participated in workshops with other talented minds in the film industry. While there, she was able to talk with the Berlin police, who told her that most of the Bulgarians who drive used cars to Bulgaria work for Russians. Her characters were independent.

The film was never made. When I ask if she would still like to make it, she replies that the time has now passed, that it’s no longer current. But maybe in the future.

“Cinema is a long, expensive process,” she says. “It has to have relevance at a certain period of time.”

With Bulgaria now officially a European country, she says that cinema cannot be a self-sustainable industry, like Hollywood is. “It’s a part of state politics (here). There is not the market, nor the market attitudes, and there is little funding.

“After the changes, there were many years during which the industry was destroyed. And when it started to come back, it was very small. Some years no films were made.”

Now there are state laws for films, with setting minimums of films to be made with state financing (for 2007, the Government said it has provided funding for five feature films).

But, unfortunately, Andonova says, it is still not permitted to create a fund to allow for independent financing of projects.

“It has to happen, but we can’t protest with films in Parliament,” she says. Why? “Because films are things of art.”

As in other South East European countries, Bulgaria needs its own fund, which would receive income from all sources, like ticket sales – and not only from ticket sales for Bulgarian films, but for American ones as well. This is how cinematic income is possible, she explains.

“Our culture needs to be protected somehow. Hungary gives many subsidies. They get the money from American films because the state has negotiated to get a portion of the sales. I want cinema to be self-financing, to create a philanthropic base. It’s hard, because it involves many laws,” Andonova says. “This year, the National Film Centre said there would be more money (available for films) than in 2006, but as prices, too, increase…” She chuckles to herself. “It’s very important that we succeed to be present abroad, to do co-productions.”

Of the seven longs-metrages Bulgaria made in 2006, three were co-productions with Germany. She says that Germany has a very open system, and funds.

As opposed to many other countries, perhaps, most Bulgarian film actors also do theatre, or vice versa. Monkeys in Winter’s three main actresses were not film artists, but a pop singer and two stage performers. Andonova explains this with there being “no borders” among the different performance media.

“Our actors are good – they don’t limit themselves,” she says. “The success of the three actors in Maimuni prez zimata is because they became themselves the characters. They are rich as actresses.”

To find actors, she prefers personally selecting someone from what she has seen him or her do – on stage in theatre, a photo in a magazine. Castings she finds “humiliating” for the persons trying out for a role.

For her upcoming project, Vutreshen glas (Inner Voice), a film bTV has invited her to direct, she has ideas of who will play some of the characters, but not yet the protagonist. She describes him as “someone rather normal – a kotuk guy who wants to take revenge on an injustice”. This normality is what attracted her to Krassimir Kroumov’s script. “It’s intimate with the camera, but still talks about common problems. Our inner fight, all our demons, what we want to happen, but doesn’t,” she says. Filming is to start in April, completing sometime in the summer.

Apart from that, Andonova has her eye on Maya Ostoich’s novel Dnevnikut na Marta (Marta’s Diary). But first she has to write the script.
This crossing the borders is also common for those who create the films. “In Bulgaria, many directors are also producers and script writers. We don’t have a large stable tradition of screenwriting,” she says. This she studied with Kiselov at NATFIZ.

If she does enjoy writing scripts, why did she choose cinema instead of theatre? Because, she tells, “it’s closer to me. I grew up in a cinematic family”: her father is a director, her mother, a screen actress, and her sister Nevena produced Monkeys in Winter.

Still, she “really likes” theatre, and holds great respect for it. It just has what she calls different requirements. Theatre, though, is one thing she enjoys for personal gratification, in addition to it being a useful means of finding future actors.

This interest in film finds itself in her other leisure activities as well: Andonova likes to read books connected with film, cinematic history and so on. Her favourite book is about dramaturgy; she’s read it numerous times. Bulgarian literature also draws her, with preferred authors being Maria Stankova and Dimitur Dinev.

And Andonova is content living in Bulgaria. She’s never wanted to live elsewhere, she says: “I’m not a world citizen. It’s important for me to live here. I cannot explain why, though there are many things that frustrate me.”

Despite frustrations, lack of funding, the challenges of finding a good cast and crew, Andonova is following her inner route, around the curves and through the potholes, to create lives on screen, played out as she would have them.  And it’s working.