Viktoria (2014)

I agree with another reviewer that this is a masterpiece. I've never seen a movie by, for, and about women that was so powerful. The reviews for this film will probably come down along gender and/or religious lines. What I took away from this movie was the point that not all women want to have children and no amount of pressure from men, religion, family, or society can change that. When safe abortion was or is not available, many teenagers find themselves ill prepared physically, emotionally, or financially to care for a child since they are still children themselves. When illegal or haphazard abortion techniques are used, women die. So, it's important that children are expected and wanted. While it's very important that a child be loved, the person doing the nurturing doesn't have to be the mother.The lead actress poignantly portrayed the type of despair that women feel when their lives are predetermined by pregnancy, men, relatives, religion, politics, or society. You don't have to live in a repressive regime like Bulgaria to be a woman under stress to become a mother. That can (and does) happen everywhere in the world. In most societies, women suffer scorn and social ostracism if they don't want to get married and have children. Mostly, women don't have access to education or opportunity to do anything other than marry and reproduce. The female body seems to be viewed more as function.It was ironic that the Bulgarian politicos thought that a baby girl with no belly button was emblematic of the new age of communism. I wonder how they would have celebrated if it was a boy with no penis. Maybe that's a topic for another movie.

The incandescent Bulgarian film VIKTORIA is likely one of the most impressive cinematic debuts of the century. Written and directed by Maya Vitkova this film is much more than a review can summarize. Visually stunning with some the finest cinematography on record, highlighted by many scenes that are actual film clips from around the world bringing us back into the history of the fall of Communism and how the world reacted to that major change, enhanced by a beautiful musical score, acted with sensitivity by Bulgarian actors we have not known until this film – all of these attributes are secondary to the actual story Vitkova has created and presented, a sensitive story by a woman about women and those aspects of giving birth and the relationship between mother and daughter and grandmother. In short (and this is a very long film at 255 minutes) this is a masterpiece.The film opens with the sounds (in darkness) of a couple coupling and the result is a pregnancy unwanted by the mother but desired by the father. The synopsis touches a few of the highlights: Dreaming of the West, Boryana (Irmena Chichikova) is determined not to have a child in communist Bulgaria. Despite her reticence, her daughter Viktoria enters the world in 1979, curiously missing an umbilical cord and an umbilicus, and is declared the Bulgaria's Baby of the Decade. Pampered by her mother state until the age of nine, Viktoria's decade of notoriety comes crashing down with the rest of European communism when Communism falls in 1989. But can political collapse and the hardship of new times finally bring Viktoria and her reluctant mother closer together? To say more would be to spoil the beauty of the manner in which this relationship and this story evolves. The character of Viktoria is played over the span of time by Daria Vitkova and Kalina Vitkova. The important role of grandmother is accentuated by Mariana Krumova, and the father Ivan is played with quiet dignity by Dimo Dimov. The film is presented with a significant historical background from which we learn much about Bulgaria under Communism, but it is told with such a warmth and profound sense of dignity and respect for the role of a childbearing mother and a 'different' child who must learn to cope. Highly Recommended.

This is one of the stupidest and ugliest movies I've seen within the last 5 years and I feel very sad and ashamed of the fact it was produced in my country. I am not surprised it won some awards in USA. This guys are willing to give everything when they find even the smallest piece of anti-communist propaganda. I thought Bulgarian movie-making has already passed the time of that kind of cheap propaganda. The story is thin and meaningless and could be told in 10 min. It might be interesting to your friends or to your shrink, Mrs. Vitkova, but you have no right to torture the audience for 3 hours with it. Regarding the actors, almost all of them were excellent, especially Anastasia Ingilizova and Mariana Krumova, who were perfect as always. But why, the hell, did you think that your nieces Kalina and especially Daria had anything to do with acting? Not to mention that it was a real challenge for me and my friends (all natives from Bulgaria) to understand Daria talking in... Bulgarian. This child doesn't need a movie-shooting, she needs a medical treatment for her nose, her third tonsil or whatever her problem is. She can hardly speak and cannot close her mouth entirely, because she cannot breath through her nose at all. (But that's not the reason she is a bad actress, of course.) And in the end there was this scene with the totally naked dead grandma. It was ugly, awful and humiliating. You said, Mrs. Vitkova, that you based the film on what happened in your life. In this regard I have a question for you: Did you really hate your grandma so much, so you made this scene so disrespectful? During the whole film you tried to convince us that you cared for her, you began to love her... Please do not try to justify yourself with the intent of showing the Caesar scar. It could be done with some art contrivances, not porn ones.

Viktoria is an ambitious, fully conceived and developed first film. It portrays the lives of three multi-generational women connected to one another by little else than birth. Concurrently the journey mirrors the history of everyday life in Bulgaria under communism and after its fall. The muted color pallet of the film, the aesthetically stark cinematography is complimented by the music. The brevity of words between these women adds to their isolation from one another. The monotony of every-day life, the isolation, the lack of connection between mother and daughter, the absence of any hope but to escape one another, the wretchedness of life is thoroughly achieved.A beautiful and highly symbolic film of great beauty and quietness.