No Place for You in Our Town

Without prejudice and by letting the characters speak for themselves, Nikolay Stefanov takes us to Pernik. Once a flourishing mining centre in Bulgaria, it is now the home of the FC Minyor soccer team, which plays in the second division of the national League. The film follows three hooligans. Tsetso works in a local factory and loves fishing; he is a devoted father to little Tony, a neo-Nazi skinhead and a hooligan. Mimeto, the only woman of the group, is in charge of coordinating the violence. Before each game, she establishes what the rules are, what can and cannot be done according to the police deployment and the opposing team’s forces. Nobody questions her authority in this matter. There is a sort of controlled violence, with an element of staging, subject to rules that everyone accepts – including Dado, the gang leader. Undoubtedly, the main attraction of the film lies in the indecipherable complexity of Tsetso. How many lives converge within this man? Stefanov seems to foreground that question and, through an impressive level of access, the film offers some possible answers. Sensitive enough to be a dedicated father, a responsible son and a thoughtful person, he is yet capable of transforming himself into a monstrous subject one day a week: into someone – as he himself points out with a certain bitterness – who thinks after acting. 

Violeta Bava