''The Lesson'' ( bg, Урок, translit. ''Urok'') is a 2014 Bulgarian

drama film In film and television, drama is a category or genre of narrative fiction (or semi-fiction) intended to be more serious than humorous in tone. Drama of this kind is usually qualified with additional terms that specify its particular super-g ...

written and directed by Kristina Grozeva and

Petar Valchanov Petar Valchanov ( bg, Петър Вълчанов; born May 15, 1982) is a Bulgarian filmmaker. He is best known for his cinematography on feature films such as '' The Lesson'' (2014), '' Glory'' (2016) and '' The Father'' (2019). Biography Valch ...

. It was screened in the Contemporary World Cinema section at the

2014 Toronto International Film Festival The 39th annual Toronto International Film Festival, the 39th event in the Toronto International Film Festival series, was held in Canada from 4–14 September 2014. David Dobkin's film '' The Judge'', starring Robert Downey Jr. and Robert Duv ...

Plot

A middle-school teacher with a young daughter has several stresses in her life: one of her students is a

petty thief Theft is the act of taking another person's property or Service (economics), services without that person's permission or consent with the intent to deprive the rightful owner of it. The word ''theft'' is also used as a synonym or informal sho ...

, her father has taken up with a much younger woman after his wife died, and her husband is an unemployed drunkard who has wasted her earnings, supposedly trying to fix a broken-down camper rather than making the mortgage payments on their home. It has all become too much, as the bank is uncooperative, dismissive, and rigid regarding her situation, so she resorts to drastic measures to save her home from foreclosure.

Cast

*Margita Gosheva *

Ivan Barnev Ivan Barnev ( bg, Иван Бърнев; born 15 July 1973) is a Bulgarian actor. He is best known for his performance as Jan Dítě in ''I Served the King of England'' (2006), as well as his frequent collaborations with filmmakers Kristina Groze ...

*Ivanka Bratoeva * *Ivan Savov *Andreya Todorova *Poli Angelova as The Secretary

Release

''The Lesson'' premiered at the

on 4 September 2014 and proceeded to make its rounds at different

film festival A film festival is an organized, extended presentation of films in one or more cinemas or screening venues, usually in a single city or region. Increasingly, film festivals show some films outdoors. Films may be of recent date and, depending upon ...

s for another year.

Critical reception

The film received generally positive reviews from critics. On

review aggregator A review aggregator is a system that collects reviews of products and services (such as films, books, video games, software, hardware, and cars). This system stores the reviews and uses them for purposes such as supporting a website where users ...

website

Rotten Tomatoes Rotten Tomatoes is an American review-aggregation website for film and television. The company was launched in August 1998 by three undergraduate students at the University of California, Berkeley: Senh Duong, Patrick Y. Lee, and Stephen Wang ...

, the film has an 83% rating based on 23 reviews, with an average rating of 7.33/10.

Metacritic Metacritic is a website that review aggregator, aggregates reviews of films, TV shows, music albums, video games and formerly, books. For each product, the scores from each review are averaged (a weighted arithmetic mean, weighted average). M ...

reports a 68 out of 100 rating based on 7 critics, indicating "generally favorable reviews".

Awards and accolades

''The Lesson'' was one of the three finalists for the 2015 European Parliament LUX Prize.

References

External links

* {{DEFAULTSORT:Lesson 2014 drama films 2010s Bulgarian-language films Bulgarian drama films Greek drama films