Binka Zhelyazkova was a Bulgarian filmmaker who was the first woman to direct a feature film Life Flows Quietly By... in 1957 after graduating from the Sofia Theatre Institute. Author of 7 fictions and 2 documentaries in a strict communist regime, B. Zhelyazkova is considered as an uncompromising pioneer and a dissident – her first film being banned for 30 years by the regime in power. Many of her films won awards outside of Bulgaria, such as We were young (Golden Prize at the Moscow IFF in 1961) or travelled to renowned festivals (The Last Word 1974 in Cannes). In Bulgaria, her films continued to be censored like The Tied up Balloon, shown at the Expo in Montréal in 1967 and soon followed by two documentaries on women in prison Lullaby and Face and Back (1981). Both films, never released in her home country, shared an unconventional look at women’s treatment in the socialist society in a nonconformist style.
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