Film Programme
Russian Roulette
documentary
Bulgaria, 2011, 30'32''
Director: Kanna Racheva
Producer: Gena Traikova
Director of photography: Ivan Filchev
Writer: Kanna Racheva
Synopsis: The European Court of Human Rights has pronounced 375 sentences against Bulgaria over last 10 years. As a result, the country has to pay millions of euros in compensations. Most of the trials are for slow justice, illegal arrests and bad living conditions in prisons. There are also trials for police violence and murders by police officers. One of these trials is for the murder of Kancho Angelov – a deserter killed by the military police.
This case was never brought to a Bulgarian court after authorities said there was no crime. Before his death, Kancho Angelov lived with Aksinia Hristova with whom he had a one-year old child. In 2004, the European Court of Human Rights in Strasbourg ruled that Aksinia would receive 50,000 euros as compensation. With the money she bought herself a new home and never returned to the house in the northwestern village of Lesura where she lived with Kancho. The compensation of 50,000 euros which Aksinia received is one of the largest ever given in Bulgaria. The money comes from taxpayers’ pockets. In 2010 alone, Bulgaria paid a total 1.2 million levs in compensations.
Director: Kanna Racheva
Born in 1965, Kanna received her Bachelor’s degree in Slavic studies and her Master’s degree in journalism and mass communication at Sofia University. In the years between 1990 and 1995 she worked for the newspapers Podkrepa, Dneven trud, Jult trud and Standart. From 1996 to 2000 Kanna was a reporter at NOVA Television. From 2000 she has been a legal and criminal reporter at bTV – Balkan News Corporation.