Georgi Djulgerov on AllMovie

Considered Bulgaria's most important filmmaker of the 1970s, Georgi Dyulgerov gained an international reputation with Avantazh/Advantage (1977), which won the Best Director Award at the 1978 Berlin Film Festival. Dyulgerov studied film direction at Moscow's VGIK under Igor Talankin. His graduation film, Bondar/The Cooper, earned Dyulgerov a prize at the 1969 Oberhausen Festival. Based on a story by Nikolai Haitov, it was filmed in Armenia. Upon his return to Bulgaria, Dyulgerov remade the film under the title Sharen Sviat (Izpit i Gola Savest)/The Test; it was then shown as part of the two-part feature Sharen Svyat/Colorful World (1971). Dyulgerov's first feature film, I Doyde Denyat/And the Day Came (1973), focused on the resistance movement and received widespread acclaim. His 1978 work Trampa/Swap examined the personality cult that surrounded Stalin. Dyulgerov earned the enmity of his government in 1981 when he made Mera Spored Mera, a three-part epic created to celebrate Bulgaria's 1,300th anniversary. Telling the story of Bulgaria's fight for freedom from the late 1800s through modern times, it featured a Macedonian protagonist and centered on the Ilinden uprising of 1903 in Greek Macedonia. As the ownership of Macedonia was a tense subject for Bulgaria and its neighbors, Dyulgerov found himself banned from making films at Bulgaria's primary studio, Boyana Studios. For a while, he directed plays in rural theaters and lectured at the Higher Institute of Theatrical Arts in Sofia, as well as making a series of sports documentaries. When Mikhail Gorbachev became president of the Soviet Union in 1989, Dyulgerov was allowed to return to Boyana and resume his career with his autobiographical account of life during Stalin's regime, Lager"t/The Camp.