Letter to America – Pismo do America (2001)

Directed by: Iglika Triffonova | 88 minutes | drama | Actors: Phillip Avramov, Ana Papadopulu, Peter Antonov, Andy Barret, Joreta Nikolova, Krassimir Dokov, Maya Novoselska, Valentin Goshev, Liubov Liubcheva

In Letter to America, Bulgarian Ivan receives a message from New York that his childhood friend Kamen has fallen into a coma due to an accident. Kamen went to America to become a theater director. We get to know him through the “video letters” he sends to Ivan about his experiences in America. His video letters express amazement at the restlessness of the people of New York, always on the move, always going somewhere. What drives them, he wonders? Finally, he seems to succeed in making his dream come true until disaster strikes him. This establishes the two themes of ‘Letter to America’: what is our purpose in life and how do we deal with suffering? Director Iglika Triffonova answers these questions in the form of a road movie in which the main character Ivan searches for the complete text of a nostalgic folk song about the passing of youth, which Ivan and Kamen knew as children.

The journey starts in Ivan’s flat in a desolate new neighborhood in Sofia, where he makes an unhappy impression. He cannot find his way in life, he can no longer write his novel and he no longer manages to love his girlfriend. Because Ivan can’t get a visa for America to visit Kamen in the hospital, he decides to make a video letter for Kamen. For that, he leaves for the village of Kamen’s grandmother so that she can sing the song for him.

He hitchhikes and first the journey is still fast by car, then with a truck passing its exit, then on foot at lightning speed down a steep hill, then again on a slow tractor and in a car that reverses and finally climbing on foot. up the mountain. Director Triffonova puts the symbolism on top in the images that show us the transition from hurried modern life to traditional farmland, where time seems to have stood still for several centuries.

And the latter is typical of ‘Letter to America’: Triffonova allows the spiritual theme to speak clearly in the imagery and dialogue of the film. Ivan is searching and along the way he gets to know all kinds of people who seem to have it worse, yet they are more purposeful and resigned to life than he is. Ivan lovingly captures these outcasts – including many very old ladies who bravely make it through life, but all scarred by a tragic event – ​​on his Video8 camera. It is not only Ivan who wants to capture the lives of these people, director Triffonova also makes a monument to the people and culture of the traditional interior of Bulgaria with this film. In that sense ‘Letter to America’ is a documentary in the form of a romantic film.

Finally, high in the mountains, Ivan finds a shepherd who still remembers the lyrics of the old folk song. When she asks what kind of work he does, he tells the old woman with some embarrassment that he is one of those modern people who don’t know what to do with their lives. The old woman is not surprised; it is clear that the old people in the village don’t know either, for them life is just as much a mystery that befalls them and that they have to get through. They all have a story about the fate that befell them; stories of childlessness and the loss of a loved one to a confession about loneliness. The signs of this are inscribed in their scruffy and tawny faces. Acceptance is the answer and we find acceptance in the tranquility of the old pre-modern customs, as Triffonova seems to want to say. If Kamen wants to wake up from his coma and Ivan find peace in his life, they must learn this lesson. ‘Letter to America’ is a nice quiet film with a clear and somewhat straightforward message that is especially impressive because of the old villagers who figure it out.