A teacher is driven to the brink of despair on the last day of term by his abusive and apathetic students. He finally snaps, and later that night, resorts to kidnapping one of the worst troublemakers in his class and trying to force him to learn - at gunpoint if need be. Thriller, starring Robert Hands and Evan Bendall
Needs must is the lesson provincial Bulgarian teacher Margita Gosheva learns in this darkly droll thriller fashioned around an actual event. Distracted from identifying a classroom thief by her own sudden financial embarrassment, Gosheva feels unable to ask her father (Ivan Savov) for a loan to meet a mortgage payment after her drunken husband (Ivan Burnev) squanders her meagre savings. But a series of cruel coincidences conspire to make her miss a deadline with a loan shark that compels the morally upright 30-something to resort to desperate measures. Taking their tonal cues from the Dardenne brothers and Christian Petzold, writer/directors Kristina Grozeva and Petar Valchanov ably capture the claustrophobia and corruption of small-town life and, by keeping the camera close to Gosheva, they succeed in making her compelling, even though she is somewhat starchily unsympathetic. A couple of contrivances feel clumsy, while some of the support playing is a touch caricatured. But the suspense is superbly maintained as the excellent Gosheva struggles to stay on her pedestal.
| role | name |
|---|---|
| Nadezhda | Margita Gosheva |
| Mladen | Ivan Barnev |
| Money Lender | Stefan Denolyubov |
| role | name |
|---|---|
| Director | Kristina Grozeva |
| Director | Petar Valchanov |
