The students of the Bulgarian "Abagar" Sunday School in Rome, Nettuno and Ladispoli will remember this year's May 31st not only because they were given their diplomas for completing the school year. The ceremony was also accompanied by an exciting premiere for the children, parents and teachers of the film "The Spirit of the Masquerade Games", in which they all have roles. The event took place at the hospitable Bulgarian Embassy in Rome. Before the screening, the project manager Detelina Kirilova said how the idea for the initiative was born.

"The Ministry of Education has created an extremely interesting program – ‘The Untold Stories of the Bulgarians’. The project is aimed at studying Bulgarian historical and cultural traces around the world and their popularization. We chose to tell about the traditions of masquerade games in Bulgaria and Italy. Naturally, we turned our attention to the festival of zoomorphic masks in Isernia, which we visited."

Everyone involved in cinema and television knows that the most difficult things to film are children and animals, in this case also mummers, because they are all unpredictable for the director. Something that the author, screenwriter and director Rositsa Lazarova-Sbaraglia, has brilliantly coped with.

"A big challenge for me was to unite the participation of children of different ages who grew up abroad in one documentary. Thanks to their exceptional teachers from the Bulgarian Sunday school Abagar in Rome, Nettuno and Ladispoli, they study the rituals of Bulgaria with great love. My idea was to combine the participation of 27 children with their teachers and parents with two extraordinary events: Surva in Pernik and the European Carnival of Zoomorphic Masks in Isernia".

"As a historian, I also had to focus on the scientific presentation of masquerade games and their history as part of the European cultural heritage. What is our message in the film? We must believe in young people, in their energy and ideas and give them the tools and opportunities to be able to build a fairer and more prosperous Europe."

This is the first major documentary for young Italian cameraman Raffaele Pedale. He also edited the production.

"I didn't know about traditional Bulgarian masks, so for me this was really the first contact. It was great when I saw a few mummers – the tall ones, with the big heads. So, to see these mummers and these costumes was certainly an unforgettable experience, although I couldn't see all this with my own eyes, but mostly through the camera. As for the most difficult part, it's certainly the opportunity to do work that I've never done before in this way. This is the first time I'm working on a documentary in a country whose language I don't speak. I was filming a festival without knowing its organization. All these difficulties together certainly led to a significant emotional burden and stress, but fortunately we managed to cope very well!"

The administrator and coordinator of the project, Detelina Kirilova, says that as a Bulgarian language teacher, she works every day with the children and observes what they want to achieve. In this process, the idea of ​​making the film with the participation of the students was born.

"The children know Italy and love it as they were born here. Our idea is for them to start loving Bulgaria as they love Italy - to understand, to learn to know its place in world history. To see that it is on par with all European countries, and for me this is a very big motivation, in order for these children to proudly stand up and say ‘I am Bulgarian!’. We also teach them to be proud of the fact that they know another language that almost none of their classmates and friends speak."

To build on their participation in "The Untold Stories of the Bulgarians", the Abagar School will also apply for another program of the Ministry of Education, called "Educational Routes", Detelina Kirilova told Radio Bulgaria. The idea is to take their students to Bulgaria - to Pernik for the "Surva" holiday or to Yambol for "Kukerlandia", so that they can fully experience the "Spirit of the Masquerade Games".

Author: Ivo Ivanov

Publication in English: Alexander Markov

Photos and video: Ivo Ivanov