Aurora

Sofia, November 7, 1952. A mock-up of the cruiser Aurora ceremonially parades along the yellow cobblestones — a revolutionary symbol reduced to a parade prop. In the shadow of the festive demonstration, Maria, the daughter of an industrialist sentenced by the People’s Court, survives as a prostitute in the lobby bar of an old bourgeois hotel. Her lover and protector is Axinia — an official sculptor of the regime, who creates ideological monuments while herself living in fear and submission.

Arriving to cover the celebrations is the Italian communist journalist Marcello Conti, who falls in love with Maria, refusing to accept the obvious — that in this world truth is indecent. Standing between them is a high-ranking officer of the secret services — a failed singer, a self-proclaimed aesthete and a sexual predator, for whom power is a personal aphrodisiac.

As monuments are unveiled, people disappear, bodies turn into a bargaining chip, and love proves to be the most dangerous form of illegality. In a world of farce and deception, escape is possible only through an even greater lie: the mock cruiser Aurora, transformed from a symbol of revolution into an absurd battering ram toward freedom.