In the Heart of the Machine

Heat, iron, dust and the smell of oil. An ordinary working day begins in the workshop of a maximum security prison. Then the inmates find something unexpected inside one of the machines. From that moment everything changes: the men take hostages, block the entrance to the workshop and put their own lives at risk. Martin Makariev's film is built like a thriller, but its real subject is this: the wish to remain human sometimes comes out stronger than the instinct to survive. The telling neither clears the prisoners nor turns them into monsters; their crimes are not in question, but the decision they take that day comes from somewhere else. It takes place almost entirely in one location and draws its tension from that. It is one of the recent works of Bulgarian cinema.