In March 2020, one of Bulgaria’s first Covid-19 outbreaks spread through a textile factory, with blame falling on a single seamstress, Iva. With Made in EU (Venezia Spotlight), Stephan Komandarev weaves together the theme of labor exploitation with a reflection on the social and psychological effects unleashed by the pandemic.
Made in EU tells the story of a worker in rural Bulgaria during the COVID-19 pandemic. How did the idea for the film first take shape?
Seven years ago, friends of mine were part of the Clean Clothes Campaign (CCC) research in Bulgaria. The results they shared with me were shocking. For the most part, the Bulgarian garment industry consists of small factories in small towns and villages with high levels of unemployment. They usually employ women. For many families this is the only source of income. As they have no other opportunities, seamstresses have to suffer extreme exploitation at work. The working conditions and the labour exploitation are much worse than in the rest of Europe and can be compared to those in the developing countries. Then I decided to make a film on this topic, but I was still looking for the specific story suitable for cinema. I found it when the Covid epidemic reached Bulgaria. Then the garment factories became the first outbreaks of the disease. This was logical, given the over-crowded workshops, the terrible working conditions, the lack of basic hygiene and safety measures. Profit was placed above human life. The women workers were forced to hide that they were sick by “popping” a few pills. That way they would not lose their already low wages, half of which were a “bonus” tied to the obligation not to miss a day of work! Made in EU is not a film about the COVID-19 pandemic. It is about another, much more frightening pandemic – that of globalization.
In the film, the main character is accused of spreading the virus in town. It seems people need someone to blame, and she becomes the scapegoat. What role does blame play in your work? Is blame what you remember most about those times?
An accumulation of crises – financial, political, Covid, now military, result in the creation of a consciousness with an acute sense of lack of security (national and personal), justice (in the distribution of the fee of crises and falling living standards) and trust between those in power and those governed. In such a situation of growing anxiety and atomized people, it is always good to find someone to blame, someone to channel the social tension and aggression that is building up. This is nothing new; we are always looking for an “enemy” who is to blame, unlike ourselves. This is a way to overcome anxiety and escape responsibility. And in general, not only for this period, but also for the last decades, I have noticed increasingly divided societies with an increasingly disappearing social “glue.”
The film is inspired by real events from that unforgettable March 2020: in Bulgaria, one of the first COVID-19 outbreaks spreads through a textile factory. The blame falls on a single seamstress, Iva, marked by the stigma of being labeled patient zero. Director Stephan Komanda...
The film highlights the cruelty of capitalism and its dynamics. Without unveiling too much of the finale, how should we interpret the ending in the broader context of the struggle against capitalism and cheap labour?
The film is a reaction against the wild globalization, deepening inequalities both between countries and inside societies. The only industry in many places in the Eastern part of the EU are the workshops of Western brands that have exported their production there. They exploit the local cheap labor, or at least what is left after the intensive labor migration to the West. Eastern Europe in this way becomes a kind of “third world” of the EU, a periphery of the periphery, where the most undesirable productions take place. The ending of the film is logical – more of the same – without solving the problems in depth…
Rusev, the doctor who helps the female protagonist, tells her son Misho that “the EU is a hypocrisy” and “it does not exist.” He then speaks of “a wall.” Could you elaborate on this idea?
The exact words Dr. Rusev uses are: “The Europe we dreamed about doesn’t exist.” He talks about everything we dreamed of in the early 1990s – equal rights, freedom, solidarity in a united Europe. The hypocrisy lies in the fact that we pretend not to see that thirty-five years after the fall of the Berlin Wall and almost two decades after the enlargement of the EU to the East, we continue to experience each other not as part of the same community. Made in EU illustrates the economic inequality between the eastern and western parts of the European Union. New iron curtain has spread across Europe – that of wages. This new wall shows the split in the EU that is so hard to overcome – between East and West, North and South, rich and poor, elites and citizens, “old” member states and “New Europe”. With this film, we from Eastern Europe, we want to raise issues about the future of Europe. And EU. Our hope is that the discussion on key topics such as the fight against inequalities and labor exploitation and the defense of the European social market economy model will contribute to a more united and more solidary European Union.
