Film director Ivan Nichev presented his new film "Taxi to Heaven", a black comedy about death, survival and emigration, in Burgas. The screening was part of the Cinelibri festival, and Nichev spoke to the audience afterwards.
Nichev is known for historical and social dramas. He has never made a black comedy before. The film is about the line between life and dying. The director said he changed genre because of his own health ordeal.
A year ago, Nichev was on dialysis, and doctors had all but given up on him. He recovered thanks to the efforts of medical staff and his own will. The experience made him think about the limits of life and the mark a person leaves behind.
"Nobody has come back from up there to tell us anything interesting," Nichev said. "That's why I decided that in the life we live, we should think about what happens here," he added.
The director worries that people are finding it easier and easier to leave Bulgaria. He said the film should push viewers to ask themselves whether to stay and build the country, or look for a career abroad. Nichev said a way is needed to make young people want to stay in their homeland.
Nostalgia never goes away, he said. Dimcho Debelyanov's poem "To Return to Your Father's House" carries a strong charge.
Nichev's meeting with the audience after "Taxi to Heaven" was announced in mid-October. We reported then that the film is one of ten European titles based on literary works that Cinelibri is showing in Burgas, and that it is a black comedy made together with Todor Chapkanov.
In 1976, there was an extra free screening in Sydney, Australia, for the Bulgarian community. Afterwards, Nichev met an emigrant, a plumber, who had made the gutters of the large hotel where the director was staying. The man asked him to take a letter to his family in Bulgaria, so they could see what he had achieved abroad. Nichev gave this memory as an example of an emigrant's fate.