I was born and raised in Bulgaria when it was still a communist country. When I was eleven, my family immigrated to the US to escape the dregs of a stagnant authoritarian system for the promise of personal and professional freedom. After many years of living in New York, I found myself on the wrong professional ladder and escaped to a tiny community outside of Oaxaca, Mexico to work on films. I returned to New York a few days before Donald Trump was elected president. A short time after, I escaped to Sweden.

I have been an immigrant three times in my life so far and escape is at the epicenter of my reasons to leave. I mistakenly equate it to freedom. The impulse to escape is so euphoric, like jumping off a cliff into open water. It allows one to wipe the slate clean and begin rewriting history,

At the center of this magical realist story are two characters who long to flee. The grandfather is trying to escape from the piles of paper he has amassed as a result of his obsession with the past. Iskra is trying to escape from her Sisyphean task of cleaning up after her grandfather. The film is an absurdist allegory about the desire to break free. 

The product of a project I began in June of 2015, this continuing documentary series focuses on bringing attention to a small network of sustainable craft studios in Oaxaca, Mexico. We succeeded in our goal to get computers and cameras into the hands of young individuals who are members of those artisan communities and train them to use the equipment in order to self-promote. As a team, we focused on documenting the process and practices of the featured studios, through organized visits. In May of 2016 the series premiered on CORTV, a public non-profit communication network that fosters the socio-cultural wealth of the state of Oaxaca. [project site]