The Lesson 2014

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The Lesson-Urok

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A lesson about right and wrong.

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About the Lesson 💬

DIRECTOR'S STATEMENT

Several years ago the TV reported that a woman has robbed a bank in a small provincial Bulgarian town. Everybody suspected that she was a junky, a criminal...

Nobody suspected that the bank robber was a decent school teacher with two master's degrees. The way it sounds - ''Teacher robbed a bank!!!'' It was precisely the contradiction within this phrase that made us look behind the tabloid sensation. This event from our reality left a deep trace in us and made us ask ourselves - what makes a decent person become a criminal? We wanted to tell the story harshly, as a part of life. We strived to be real to the extreme, to create a painfully authentic film story. We got deep into the teacher's inner world, we tackled her inner conflicts, her fight with her own morality.

One of the main tasks for us as directors was to develop rich and deep human personalities. Together with the DOP (Director of Photography) Krum Rodriguez we decided that the camera had to be unnoticed and contemplative, to look carefully at the details and the action, without being obvious. The film was shot in a real provincial town. Most of the small parts were played by real people, not actors. Our main actors had to blend in naturally, they had to partner with the nonprofessionals, and their performances had to be as authentic and real as possible.

Our goal was that the audience wouldn't be able to tell an actor from a non-actor in the finished film. Margita Gosheva is a real discovery for us in this sense. After she read the script we changed some lines and situations, but the main work was done on set when she was put in the real situations with the real class of 30 children. The sense of authenticity and real life was leading in each element - make-up, costumes, set design, light, and sound.

In the beginning, we started shooting just different episodes of the film as a teaser while we were trying to find money for the production, but the cast and crew were so inspired by the story that they didn't want to stop until we had finished the last shot. Everyone worked for deferred payments and we are truly thankful to the cast and crew who were fully devoted to the filmmaking process despite the minimal time we had for the shooting, and the difficult conditions we were working due to our micro-budget.

The LESSON is the first feature in a planned trilogy. The three stories are inspired by the living reality, but we don’t intend to tell biographical stories, we use this inspiration only as a creative start. The unifying element between the three stories is the theme of the quiet rebellion of the little person against the mercantile, soulless and cynical world we live in.

The Lesson Movie Details 🎥

Directed by

Kristina Grozeva

Petar Valchanov

Writing Credits

Kristina Grozeva

Petar Valchanov

Starring

Margita Gosheva

Ivan Barnev

Ivan Savov

Ana Bratoeva

Stefan Denolyubov

Ivanka Bratoeva

Andrea Todorova

Cinematography by

Krum Rodriguez

Genres: Drama, Thriller

Countries: Bulgaria, Greece

The Lesson Official Trailer

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