What would you do if you stumbled across a million dollars in cash, lying on the ground somewhere rarely visited? Would you hand it in to the authorities? You might assume there'd be a benign result from such a moral act.
One railroad lineman did just that, and it turned him into the butt of a national joke.
“Glory,” by Bulgarian filmmakers Kristina Grozeva and Petar Valchanov, is a deftly executed tragicomedy that puts a magnifying glass over the social consequences of personal actions. The film opens at the Film Forum in New York City on April 12.
Lineman Tsanko Petrov (Stefan Denolyubov) finds a bag spilled all over the railroad tracks filled with millions of dollars in cash. As he heard on the radio that morning, the finances of the Ministry of Transport are in disarray. Corruption is rampant, embezzlement is the norm, and Petrov hasn’t been paid his meager salary in two months. Our quiet and unassuming protagonist reports his findings to the ministry, prompting a massive farce of a public relations circus, with Petrov center stage as the model government employee.
