Firstborn

Firstborn is a film about awakening, in the widest sense of the word.

We live inside a system of rules and restrictions so complete that we no longer see it. We call it normal. We call it order. And we rarely notice how little we are actually free to do. We are chained, and the chains feel like the world.

Firstborn makes that system visible. It is a world powered by its children’s voices, a world already collapsing, still held together by people who would rather keep the machine running than face what it costs.

I am not interested in predicting the shape of what awaits us. I am interested in its logic: what we are willing to accept, and to sacrifice, to keep the status quo intact.

A stolen boy and the man who betrayed him. Neither of them is a hero. What they share is the moment of waking up, and the choice that comes after.

The film is inspired by a short story my father wrote forty years ago. I am making it in Bulgarian, the language it was born in: as a tribute to him, and because working in the original language gives the film a precise identity.