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BETWEEN HEAVEN AND EARTH

Drama - Development 2011

This story is about a man’s quest to restore faith in life after great loss. As he journeys between two different worlds and cultures, he struggles with his fears, his memories, and the circumstances of the times we live in and finds the courage to accept life on its own terms.

- Year of production
- 2011
- Genres
- Drama
- Countries
- BULGARIA
- Languages
- ENGLISH, BULGARIAN
- Budget
- 3 - 5 M$
- Duration
- 100 mn
- Writer(s)
- Elizabeth FRANK, Ivann ROSSENOV
- Producer(s)
- Georgy CHOLAKOV (Geopoly), Pavlina JELEVA (Geopoly), Steve BOWDEN
- Synopsis
- Peter Stoev, a Bulgarian filmmaker, arrives in NYC a year after his wife’s death to show his documentary about her to the ethnic film festival there. At the airport he is met by his old friend Stefan, who’s been living in NYC for many years and is the engineer responsible for the maintenance of all its bridges. Also there to meet him is Mary, a former Bulgarian actress residing in the US and married to a wealthy Russian émigré businessman in the construction industry.
  In the course of Peter’s stay, Mary suggests that they collaborate on a play to be based on the notes written by Peter’s late wife, the celebrated Bulgarian actress Katya Kirilova, while she was in the hospital dying and unable to speak. These notes reveal complex and subtle aspects of the relationship between two gifted, sensitive and intelligent people who loved each other as well as painful truths about life, death, and the realities of post - 1989 Bulgaria. As a man who was born and grew up in a communist country, Peter is at sea in capitalist America, while Mary is absolutely at home and comfortable with basic capitalist values. In the future play, Mary, whose Russian-American husband had forbidden her to act, envisions her rebirth as an actress long estranged from her craft. For Peter, the director, doing this play with Mary offers a new beginning. At the same time, however, the process of writing the play forces him to go back to the painful time he spent at his wife’s deathbed. While Peter and Mary work on the play, their creative struggle establishes a certain closeness between them that nevertheless only reveals in the end that they belong to two different worlds - culturally and artistically. Mary develops an intimate and adulterous relationship with Peter’s old friend Stefan and Peter, injured in a “mugging,” finds himself replaced as the director of the show. Nevertheless, the play is performed and Mary’s performance as Peter’s wife receives a standing ovation. Peter’s resentment and disappointment turn to acceptance and he returns to Bulgaria with a renewed commitment to life.
- Partners & financing
- Vita Nova Films (UK)