WHY THIS STORY?
Anton Chekhov focused his plays on charismatic yet ordinary people, doing ordinary things and suffering ordinarily in deeply real and touching ways - for him the ordinary was extraordinary. When we first encountered the Bulgarian town of Kazanlak, it felt like a place that could easily belong in one of his stories. Kazanlak is home to the arms manufacturer Arsenal, whose factories have shaped the town’s identity for generations. Here it is perfectly normal for soft-spoken, middle-aged women to talk about the thousands of AK-47s they have assembled or ignore the sound of weapons being tested nearby.
Rather than making a film about the weapons industry itself, we chose to focus on one life within it. When we met Irina, we immediately knew she could carry the story. A single mother in a deeply patriarchal society, she lives with a constant sense of economic vulnerability, yet refuses to see herself as a victim. Our film follows her at a pivotal moment, as she moves closer to the town of Kazanlak in the hope of giving her daughter, Stefi, opportunities she herself never had. In telling her story, we hoped to show - much like in a Chekhov play - that within the ordinary lives of everyday people lie extraordinary stories of remarkable strength, tenderness and hope.
