A group of friends meets a shy young man with communication problems who has just fallen in love at first sight. The teenagers start hanging out together and next moment, they decide to commit a petty crime in order to raise money for a seaside holiday but their plot to kidnap a wealthy old lady’s cats brings them dangerously close to a mobster and drug trafficker, and they might just find themselves in a spot of trouble deeper than they could have imagined.

Director Tsvetodar Markov’s first feature film presents an amalgam of love and despair, hope and disillusionment, revenge and revelation. Throughout the film, the story veers wildly between violence and black humor, suspense and farcical comedy. A drugs haul, a gangsters shooting and a bloody bath set up the underworld theme, while a practical joke involving the kidnapping of cats anchors the comedy, leaving a would-be lover waiting on a park bench with a bouquet for his beloved at the exact center of the plot.

Official selections in IFF: Chicago 2011, Buenos Aires 2011, Chennai 2011

Warsaw 2010, Segovia 2010, Kiev 2010

Hunting Down Small Predators (‘Лов на дребни хищници’, Bulgaria, 2010) / Directed by Tsvetodar Markov / Casting: Marian Vulev, Vladimir Georgiev, Silvia Petkova, Hristo Shopov, Yana Titova / Comedy, thriller, 95 min, English subtitles.

Un jeune homme souffrant de problèmes de communication va consulter un psychiatre. Il fait l’expérience d’un coup de foudre, puis rencontre trois amis et rejoint leur petit groupe. Les quatre jeunes décident naïvement de faire de l’argent facile en faisant chanter une vieille dame. Mais ils ignorent qu’un étranger avec un passé douteux et un présent plus que problématique va bousculer leur vie. Le film est une histoire d’amour et de souffrance, d’espoir et de désillusion, de vengeance et de révélations dans un monde où se côtoient adolescents et criminels.