A film by Adela Peeva (2003) – Duration: 70 min – Bulgaria

This film is a quest—by turns humorous, dramatic, and tragicomic—for the truth behind a song. A song that every Balkan people claims as their own. A song that appears in many guises: a love song, a religious hymn, even a call to arms.

Through a fascinating journey across Turkey, Greece, North Macedonia, Albania, Bosnia, Serbia, and Bulgaria, the film humorously reveals certain characteristic traits of the Balkan peoples—their tendency to appropriate whatever is good and to deny others the right to share the same qualities, the same songs, the same customs, and the same spirit.

In collaboration with Cinélux Cinema, Geneva.