THE LESSON

Nadezhda, an English teacher in a provincial Bulgarian city, has high moral standards, both for herself and others. When a student’s wallet is stolen one day in her class and Nadezhda gets it in her head to convince the thief to give it back – or to catch the culprit – it’s only the first of a whole series of difficult tests of her morals. For she herself is stuck in dire financial straits: debt is threatening to drown her little family and her husband, just as drunk as he is lazy, is no help at all. When the repayment of a bank loan comes due, even eviction from the family house becomes a concrete possibility. Nadezhda only has three days left to scrape together the money she needs, three days that turn into an out and out Kafkaesque odyssey. Whatever can go wrong, does, and out of pure desperation even Nadezhda’s noble principles begin to totter ... Calm and precise, with an unflinching look at social relations, though at the same time with laconic humour, Kristina Grozeva and Petar Valchanov’s feature film debut tells the story of the relegation battle of a woman who is forced to experience first-hand what material hardship can drive a person to do.