Eastern Plays
What has a guy got to do to stay noticed? Take Bulgarian director Kamen Kalev’s 2009 feature debut Eastern Plays. It got good reviews (Variety called it “an impressive debut”), went to Cannes and won a clutch of awards on the festival circuit. But Kalev has made only three films in the intervening 15 years and his latest, 2020’s Février (aka February), is currently sitting on the IMDb with no reviews whatsoever to its name. On the evidence of Eastern Plays, which is the only one of Kalev’s films I’ve seen, this is grossly unfair. This is an extraordinarily accomplished film, full of visual style, and loaded with a vivid punk energy and … Read more