The Visit

Soon after the state of emergency due to COVID-19 was over in Bulgaria my mom suffered a heavy injury which resulted in series of hardships for the whole family. We became victims of extortion and total indifference on the behalf of the medical staff in the hospital where my mother was checked in. I was truly shocked by the irresponsible attitude towards my mom, because old people here are usually found useless and thus neglected. Often they don’t get proper care and I think this is a huge problem in Bulgaria.
Even though such immoral practices in our healthcare has been a fact for years the quarantine became a fertile soil for such tendencies to bloom. The isolation, which is often needed, and in some cases mandatory in hospitals, turned into a curtain for the corruption and decay at all hierarchy levels. This causes maladies to both patients along with their relatives and honest, highly professional medical doctors.
That’s how the idea for The Visit was born. I decided to recreate these real events, focusing on the subject of corruption in the healthcare and the lack of trust in authorities. My goal is to raise awareness on the problem and also to provoke a discussion on this matter.
The hospital here is a metaphor for the system, the status-quo, the state itself. The ordinary person is powerless. This is the real conflict here – the little man versus the system.
The film will be shot mainly in real hospital environment. Everything will look white, spotlessly clean and sterile in contrast with the dirty human interrelations. In this dystopic world full of existential, Kafkaesque elements, human life has no real value. The aim is to achieve overexposed visual environment where the characters will feel small and insignificant.
For this project I utterly rely on the professionalism of the actors, the director of photography – Veselin Hristov and the producer Katya Trichkova with whom we already had a really exciting working process during the filming of my previous short feature Clothes.
The Visit will be a warning. Corruption is a virus and every single one of us can be exposed. It will be a film for the power of love and the power of life.