True/False Films

The Mosquito Problem (and other stories)
Dir. Andrey Paounov; 2007; 100 min.
Saturday, Mar. 1 / 7:30PM / Big Ragtag
Sunday, Mar. 2 / 3:30PM / Big Ragtag

In person: co-creator Lilia Topouzova.

Sneak preview. First, dose Robert Altman with a sprinkling of James Thurber and set it a hard-luck Bulgarian town. Then make it all true. You'll have created something like Andrey Paounov's funny, disturbing 360-degree portrait of the bug-infested village of Belene. Located along the Danube, Belene was home to an infamous concentration camp (which one entrepreneur hopes to transform into a nature preserve). A nuclear power plant was shut down before it opened (though its logo'ed plates and saucers take place of pride in the local café). There is a piano tuner with a taste for boogie woogie, pom-pom dancers, frogmen back from Iraq and kids who play in the fog of DDT sprayed to kill some of the mosquitoes. On the one hand, the worst possible tourism film, The Mosquito Problem is, on the other, an amazing coup de cinema, a masterfully constructed, wryly funny portrait of a town that (hopefully) is unlike any other. (JS)