Byalata staya

Through the life and the academic career of the psychologist Peter Aleksandrov (brilliantly interpreted by Apostol Karamitev) the film examines important problems in Bulgarian society during the sixties. In the loneliness of a white hospital room, almost entirely isolated from the outside world, the protagonist relives the crucial moments of his past: the deprivation-filled years of the resistance struggle, the tempestuous love affair of his university years, his chance marriage, the conflict at his office, in the scientific community and his personal life. In the face of death he is anxiously reviewing the road he has traveled, he is searching for the meaning of his contradictory life. In the process he touches on questions of loyalty to one's ideas and friends, on the tragic price of compromise and indifference. The film does not offer any soothing illusions but calls for a struggle aimed at asserting social and moral norms of conduct. Though The White Room was Metodi Andonov's feature film debut, it won him recognition as one of the best Bulgarian directors.