THE MOSQUITO PROBLEM AND OTHER STORIES

Andrej Paunov’s documentary is a portrait of Belene, a small town on the Danube in northern Bulgaria. At first, the place seems like any provincial town. But in truth, Belene has an eventful and difficult past. In the period 1949-59, a nearby island in the Danube was the site of an infamous labour camp for opponents of the communist government. Today it houses a prison. Plans to build a nuclear power station in Belene went ahead in the 1980s, but dreams of a glowing atomic future were dashed when the half-completed reactor site was abandoned some years later. Of the army of labourers imported from fraternal communist states to work on the construction project, only one cheerful Cuban remains. He’s just one of many curious characters in THE MOSQUITO PROBLEM. Further accounts of Belene life and personal histories come from a gregarious wild-boar hunter, an eccentric piano tuner, and an Italian priest. One woman relates how her mother, formerly a warden in the labour camp, subsequently received a long prison sentence. We see a group of young cheerleaders, and an elderly ex-mayor who proudly poses with a cartridge belt and shotgun. But one topic dominates almost every conversation: the ubiquitous mosquitoes that find ideal breeding conditions in the marshlands of the Danube Delta. It’s a problem the locals meet with equanimity and wit.