Early on in I See Red People, Bojina Panayotova, the director and protagonist of the documentary, calls her mother, Mirena, on Skype and they talk together. The conversation is a little strained, even this early on in the film, and Mirena’s face is impenetrable when her daughter tells her “I have the impression that there are secrets.” A slow and halting internet connection exacerbates the tension: there’s a lag, a dragging of the image as it tries to keep up with Bojina’s quick, inquisitive movements, and this emphasises her mother’s stillness, the fact that she’s already slightly defensive. This is a deft prelude of what’s to come: over the course of the documentary Bojina becomes her parents’ inquisitor in what is both an investigation of the complicated legacy of communism in Bulgaria and a fascinating study of parent-child relationships. I See Red People, screened this year in the Panorama section for the 68th Berlinale, is a stunning and intelligent debut from Panayotova, who approaches questions of responsibility and familial duty with a skilful elegance that will surely distinguish her in years to come.
We’re told that Bojina and her family immigrated to France when she was eight following the fall of the Soviet Union, and the opening sequence, a captivating mix of 16mm footage from old rallies and high-definition video of recent political protests, situates us within this difficult legacy and the contradiction that it poses to her “enchanted communist childhood”. It’s her past that Bojina has returned to Bulgaria to try and understand and her determination to figure out the truth leads her into a conflict with both parents (because her past is also necessarily their past) and an ethical impasse that the film explores in vivid, emotional detail. She’s suspicious of the privileges her family received, such as overseas travel, and it’s her Bulgarian driving instructor who finally gives her the answer, arguing that that they must have somehow worked for the secret police, in what is the first of several beautifully managed auto interludes that recall Jafar Panahi’s Taxi Tehran, or Abbas Kiarostami’s Ten. (There’s also a great moment where we realise that, by dint of the recording set-up Google tells me is increasingly popular for driving lessons, he’s become her cinematographer, too.)
Following this conversation, Bojina becomes increasingly fixated on the idea that her family, and in particular her grandfather, were either members of the secret police or in some way connected to it. Herein lies one of the many ethical complexities of I See Red People: in order to uncover her family history she must enlist the help of her family, as nobody except the individual in question has the right to delve into their personal history under communist. Following the dissolution of the Soviet Union, individuals were permitted to request their file – the secret police routinely monitored vast tracts of the population, creating a vast collective surveillance that was also often carried out by friends and neighbours. Both Bojina’s parents dismiss the idea that a file on them exists. Her father, Nicolai, disapproves of her project and argues that it is the prerogative of the older generation, who lived through communism, to let the past lie – later, he describes her drive to figure out the truth as the same form of totalitarian absolutism that characterised the regime: she’s been swept up by a ‘post-communist paranoia’ that expresses nothing but the insensitivity of the younger generation. It’s her mother that she manages to persuade to return to Sofia and she watches, victorious, as Mirena fills out the form requesting her file. Yet it’s also her mother that the documentary project ends up hurting the most.
I See Red People raises some difficult questions. Who has the right to family history: the older generation who lived through it, or the younger generation whose lives have been shaped by it without their consent or knowledge? Bojina pushes her parents to breaking point both through her questions and her methods; her behaviour is manipulative, often deceitful. She refuses to let go of anything. And although she records conversations on Skype with their permission, there are plenty of moments at which she films or records them when they’ve asked her to stop. Various members of her family ask her to give up; shedoesn’t. We read their emails to her, the translated text scrolling across the screen – her father, face blurred by another faulty connection, tells her that he feels ‘violated’. In a different scene, Bojina is talking with a recalcitrant aunt when her cousin sells the older woman out via a quick act of family treason – with her back turned, washing dishes, she reminds the aunt of when she cried at something on television, and questioned, audibly, her own responsibility and complicity with the regime. Nomenklatura; ‘red trash’ – Bojina is in a country that’s split in two, divided by a history that’s too unpleasant for anyone to want to remember.
Panayotova’s mixing of mediums and techniques perfectly reflects the tangled nature of historical truth. Bad Skype connections, computer lag, and the erratic shuddering of her phone camera from frame to frame, become a formal parallel to the communication difficulties that arise between Bojina and her parents, whilst the use of video game graphics, or old driving footage combined with an over-the-top soundtrack to form a chase sequence, expresses her sometimes childish delight in the unravelling of a mystery, the experiencing of an adventure. These are balanced with more serious moments where the computer screen is a mirror for her sadness and the split-screen takes on a confessional intimacy. I See Red People is an excellent film and the sensitive portrayal of the mother-daughter relationship at the centre lifts it to brilliance. Towards the end of the film Mirena sends her daughter a furious email and thick red words blazon her anger across the screen, but Bojina’s passed her driving test and so this ends with perhaps the most motherly postscript ever – ‘PS: I’m very happy for your driver’s licence’.
Missouri Williams is a writer living in the Czech Republic. She is Assistant Editor of Another Gaze. Her instagram can be found at @missouriwilliams
