Bulgarian Movie Showcased at NYC Film Fest

Bulgarian movie "The Color of the Chameleon" of director Emil Hristov has been selected for New York's New Directors/New Films annual showcase of promising and confirmed cinematic talent.

The joint venture of the Film Society of Lincoln Center and the Museum of Modern Art begins Wednesday.

"The Color of the Chameleon" centers on misfit youth turned engraving plant employee Batko Stamenov (codename: Marzipan), who is recruited by the secret police to infiltrate a book reading group.

The film has already received international accolades and awards.

The prestigious New York Times offers the following review for the Bulgarian movie:

"In this stylized, lurid, archly literary pastiche of espionage thriller and coming-of-age story, the Bulgarian director Emil Christov imagines the end of Communism as the dramatic replacement of one reality with another. Or maybe the collapse of one form of absurdity and the triumph of another. Either way, a handsome, intense young man named Batko (Ruscen Vidinliev) finds himself embroiled in interlocking conspiracies, and the viewer bounces dizzily from satire to suspense to political allegory. Recruited by the secret police to spy on a group of ridiculous intellectuals, Batko turns his existence into an elaborate series of plots and counterplots. In the process he reveals himself to be either the most cynical person in Bulgaria or the only one who could be described as sincere. As a storyteller and a maker of images, Mr. Christov demonstrates a remarkable, exuberant sense of strangeness. And also a very specific appreciation for the early work of John Updike."

The full list of NYT's films and reviews can be found HERE.