No Place For You In Our Town

Nikolay Stefanov – Director’s Note

I was born and raised in the city of Pernik, an industrial and mining centre right next to Bulgaria’s capital Sofia. Growing up there in the 90s, I often witnessed fights and crime. Violence was an integral part of the life of the city’s youth. I was earning my fair share of trouble on the streets.

This was in the 1990s when the rule of law had no place in Pernik. It was between the fallen Communism and the upcoming new order, when most of the mines in the city got closed. The shop shelves were all empty, as were our parents’ pockets. From these times I got to know some of the members of the Minyor Pernik gang.

Over time, my life changed. I took a new path — in cinematography — and moved out of Pernik. But many of my fellows stayed, and their lives remained the same.

Twenty years later, I went back to Pernik to face my past and tell the story of these same people. Today they have fewer teeth and gray hair. They still live on the verge of the law, passing on their legacy to the next generation of men — in the only way they know and understand it.

To enter the world of the gang, I started going to the matches and hanging out at the fan club. Some of the guys remembered me and my brother from our young days, and that’s how I established natural access to the core of the gang. It still took time for them to accept me as a ‘real man’ from Pernik.

Coming from this background, over the years I’ve thought a lot about anger and aggression, what radicalises people, and the changing norms of masculinity. Back in the day, the working class was the backbone of society and of countries’ economic development; today they’re no one. I’ve also wondered about the impact the environment one grows up in has and what gets passed on from generation to generation.

Exploring these issues in the form of a film, I dug behind the rough image of the Minyor Pernik gang. I aimed to portray the characters’ reality as it is, and let the audience connect the dots about their complex stories. I believe by looking in-depth on a small scale we can learn a lot about the big picture.

This has not been an easy film to make — because of its provocative nature, challenging characters, and my personal journey to make peace with the past. Yet I think this film is important and can help in understanding difficult but crucial issues that our societies have to talk about.