After years of saving money from the small bribes they collect, sixty-year-old Marina and her husband Gosha are preparing for their dream trip to St Petersburg to witness the White Nights. But when Russia invades Ukraine and the travel agency vanishes with all their savings, the couple’s dream collapses, along with their illusion of control over their moral principles and their relationship with each other.
“We started talking about a couple of petty corrupt people who admire Russia and came up with the title Black Money For White Nights, which is a reversal of the Bulgarian saying, ‘Save money for a rainy day.’ / ... / When Russia invaded Ukraine, something clicked, and we made a few small adjustments to bring the story into sync with the new reality. The characters remained the same, but the war stripped them bare and gave them sharper contours. Before the war, these characters seemed slightly comic. After the war, they didn’t seem so comic anymore.” (Petar Valchanov, Kristina Grozeva)