Ulli Gladik:
(Natasha)
A few years ago, after returning from a long study trip in Bulgaria, I met Kirtsho. He came from Sofia and used to beg on Vienna’s Mariahilfer Straße. After talking with Kirtsho many times, I eventually had the idea of making a film about him. But it never came to pass. Kirtsho was deported shortly afterwards, and when I visited him a few months later in Sofia, he was still so traumatized by the period spent in custody pending deportation that he no longer wanted to make a film. Eventually, a research trip brought me, together with a Slovakian family, to a small village in southern Slovakia. Many inhabitants of this village also travel to Austria to beg. They have no other way of earning a living.
Later, then, in Graz, I met Natasha. She and I clicked right away, and her candor and patience allowed me to finally carry out my project. I visited her and filmed her over a period lasting almost two years: her trips to Austria, her work as a beggar, the refugee home in Graz, the way she copes with the cold and the solitude, her family life, and her daily life in Bulgaria.
Beggars are the Untouchables of our society. We don’t want to see them, we avoid them, and we have all kinds of prejudices about them. The aim of my film was to extract an individual from this anonymity and show who she was – to render her touchable, in a sense.
Наташа
(Natasha)
84 minutes, stereo, color © 2008
Bulgarian with German or English subtitles
Director, camera, and producer: Ulli Gladik
Assistant directors: Ursula Sova, Katerina Georgieva, Jutta Sommerbauer
Editors: Karin Hammer, Ulli Gladik
Supported by: innovative film austria, “Kulturamt der Stadt Wien” (Cultural Office of the City of Vienna), Robert Bosch Stiftung, cine styria.