| The Judgment | |
| Director: | Stephan Komandarev |
| Producer: | Stephan Komandarev Katya Trichkova Polly Guentcheva Alexander Ris Christine Haupt Boris T. Matic Vladimir Anastasov Angela Nestorovska[1] |
| Starring: | Assen Blatechki |
| Cinematography: | Krasimir Andonov |
| Editing: | Nina Altaparmakova |
| Music: | Stefan Valdobrov |
| Runtime: | 107 minutes |
| Country: | Bulgaria Germany Croatia Macedonia[2] |
| Language: | Bulgarian |
The Judgment (Bulgarian: '''Съдилището''') is a 2014 Bulgarian drama film directed by Stephan Komandarev.[3] [4] It was selected as the Bulgarian entry for the Best Foreign Language Film at the 88th Academy Awards but it was not nominated.[5] [6] [7]
The film takes place in Bulgaria by the Rhodope Mountains, near the Turkish border. A widower, Mityo, needs money to forestall foreclosure on his home. He drives a milk tanker but business is slow, so he reluctantly accepts a job smuggling migrants over the border into Bulgaria. (A character in the film describes the migrants as "Gypsies, Arabs, and blacks"; many of them are presumably Refugees of the Syrian Civil War.[8]) The work reminds Mityo of his military service in the late 1980s, assigned to the Bulgarian border guard, where his task was to prevent citizens from leaving the Eastern Bloc.