North American Premiere
A middle-aged prison psychologist’s carefully managed routine and sex addiction unravel when she must travel to Bulgaria to settle her late, estranged father’s affairs. While trying to make sense of the man she never really knew, her own sense of self slowly implodes as new aspects of her family history come to light.
A decade after winning Locarno’s Golden Leopard for her feature debut Godless, Ralitza Petrova returns with an emotionally textured sophomore drama exploring the correlation between childhood wounds and adult expressions of desire. With a steady hand and impressive formal discipline, she crafts a complex character study that skillfully cushions its provocative themes in mundane moments of bureaucratic hassle and sterile institutional settings. Led by the excellent Snejanka Mihaylova as an emotionally repressed woman reclaiming her body and soul, Lust is a nuanced, polished addition to the arthouse canon that reveals its layers long after the credits roll.
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Snejanka Mihaylova, Nikola Mutafov, Mihail Milchev, Alexis Atmadjov
Bulgaria/Denmark/Sweden
2026
In Bulgarian and English with English subtitles
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Credits & Director
Producer
Nikolay Todorov, Poli Angelova, Ralitza Petrova
Screenwriter
Ralitza Petrova
Cinematography
Julian Atanassov
Editor
Per K. Kirkegaard, Ralitza Petrova
Production Design
Vanina Geleva
Ralitza Petrova
Ralitza Petrova, born 1976, studied film and video art at the University of the Arts London and fiction directing at the UK’s National Film and Television School. Her films have screened at major international film festivals, including Cannes, Berlin, Locarno, and Toronto. In 2016, her feature debut Godless premiered at the Locarno Film Festival, where it won the Golden Leopard for Best Film. The film went on to receive 27 awards worldwide and was nominated for the 2017 European Discovery Award – Prix FIPRESCI. Her sophomore feature, Lust (2026), premiered at the 76th Berlin International Film Festival (Forum).
Filmography: Godless (2016); Better Nature (2019)
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