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When an American Pursues Bulgarian Dreams
In The Black Sea, Crystal Moselle and Derrick B. Harden co-direct a lovely ode to finding one’s place even when feeling out of place.
An energetic yet modest story about a Black Brooklyn man unexpectedly stuck in a small Bulgarian town populated entirely by white people, it’s a testament to the possibility that human connection can be forged anywhere on Earth, even between individuals of wildly different backgrounds. Hoping to score a big payday simply by touching this lady, Khalid journeys overseas only to find that she’s already dead and no one plans to compensate him, leaving him with no cash for a return flight. The film’s tone is alternately bracing — the camera is unflinching when Georgi (Stoyo Mirkov), a tyrant who briefly hires Khalid to do odd jobs, beats him with a shoe after accusing him of trying to sleep with his wife — and jubilant.
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