“If you make a bad movie about someone who died, then you’ve done something abominable and dull,” warns Nikola Boshnakov, the director of “My Uncle Luben.” Thankfully, his movie is neither abominable, dull, nor bad, although its main character is in fact deceased. Luben Stoev (1939–2016) was a painter whose uncanny instinct for life’s true riches went beyond any fashion, trend, or prejudice. His screen portrait is pieced together by family and friends, and most of all, by like-minded people who gather around him in frame and off-screen and who adopt his view of the world—dark, comical, and dangerously resolute. The movie’s focal point seems to zoom out from the single person to depict something more general—our present. Instead of relying on melodrama and contempt, the film uses humour, which is at times ruthless. It shows how an honest artist can find a model standing near the garbage cans, then props for his works in that same garbage, and finally let time decide which of his paintings is garbage and which one isn’t.

For a while now, documentaries have been using the methods of feature films to create works that feel real and immensely important to our existence—to extract the humanе and the meaningful. Boshnakov remains committed to this approach even at the risk of annoying the viewers with sequences that feel overly cinematic. The characters of Luben and his allies move us with their funny, yet touching stories, and remind us that life is the single most talented screenwriter.

At the centre of the story is an artist who hasn’t sold a canvas in years, though this comes as no surprise to him. Luben examines the post-communist transition period in Bulgaria through its social outcasts—he paints wretched or homeless people, thugs, prostitutes, or the mentally ill. He finds their beauty endearing. Luben puts in enormous effort, even though he realises few would appreciate it and his works won’t decorate any apartment but his own. After all, who’d put a baffling grotesque, depicting a homeless man dressed like a Nazi war prisoner, on their wall? Luben is well-aware that art has more noble purposes than sales. This is what the movie is all about—the fates of people who could only put us to shame for being so stoic and resolute.

In 2023, “My Uncle Luben” won the Best Director award at the Bulgarian documentary and animated film festival, “Golden Rhyton.” Nikola Boshnakov joked that they won by numbers; while the rest of the nominees had one director, “My Uncle Luben” had two—Boshnakov himself and Jackie Stoev, Luben’s brother. Georgi “Jackie” Stoev is a well-known bohemian and documentary filmmaker who also dabbles in feature films and is known for his acquired-taste sense of humour. What’s great about the movie is that Luben’s bantering tone takes over—he is sardonic, profound, and mercilessly accurate. Another considerable merit of the story is that it is told by another eccentric—the German son of Jackie—Ray van Zeschau. He provides both an external and a very intimate look into the painter’s life. Born in East Germany, Ray describes himself as the result of an “ill-fated Bulgarian-German incident.” For him, Bulgaria is filled with distant childhood memories. In Germany, Ray is the frontman of the popular rock band Freunde der Italienischen Oper, which has just reunited after a long hiatus. Fate, however, sends the musician back to Bulgaria to sell the apartment he inherited from his uncle. Surrounded by the macabre canvases and installations, buried in memories and a voluminous video archive, Ray is looking for the key to deciphering Luben’s personality. He’s also trying to find his uncle’s real legacy, some unspoken but eternal truth about the meaning of art.

The scenes with the German alternate with retrospective episodes featuring Luben Stoev himself. Part of the segments draw from his personal archive and footage from a previous film he was featured in. As a retired person, he lives miserably, but once upon a time, he travelled around the world to gather inspiration for his art. He graduated from the Dresden Academy of Fine Arts, but no money or recognition followed. We discover that he found real love in Germany, and that special someone still holds him dear. The artist persisted on his own path for decades, without finding any followers or admirers of his work. Hopefully, his nephew will give a posthumous chance to his paintings, and they will be reconsidered. At the end of the movie, Bulgaria’s senior citizens, the beggars, and the outcasts in Lubo’s paintings enter the dignified building of the Dresden Gallery. Ray heroically drives his uncle’s works there so that they can be presented to the timidly approaching visitors, masked against COVID.

In the end, it’s up to the viewers to make some sense of Luben Stoev’s life and art. Surely, not all will understand it. Some might even be left with the impression that “My Uncle Luben” is a deeply sad movie. Others will perceive the finale—in which Luben is eagerly playing the accordion, his audience an empty tram—as a triumphant happy ending. In any case, hardly anyone could stay indifferent to the artist who was brave enough to cast a steady gaze at the people most of us look away from.

“My Uncle Luben” offers its themes subtly and unobtrusively. Every character is depicted with a mix of irony and empathy, with a tactfulness and tenderness that are one-of-a-kind. Some unknown, secret powers unite their impact to portray the world all of humanity partakes in, and the painter—as a person whose life purpose is to enlighten us.

Материалът е изготвен
с финансовата подкрепа
на Националния фонд „Култура”.