GODLESS New Auteurs

Gana is a nurse who spends her days shuttling between elderly patients. Yet behind her seemingly selfless work tending to the physical indignities of old age, Gana is running a scam: In cahoots with her boyfriend — with whom she shares a morphine addiction — Gana steals her patients’ ID cards and sells them to a corrupt cop, who in turn supplies the cards to shell companies. When Gana strikes up a relationship with one of her patients, a retired choirmaster, and finds herself quietly moved by the hymns sung by his chorus, she begins to question her hardened existence. Is it too late for her to carve out a path of beauty and light? Directed with striking formal intuition by Ralitza Petrova, GODLESS follows one woman’s existential dilemma in the post-Communist city of Vratsa, Bulgaria, here shot as a jarring juxtaposition of picturesque and crumbling. Irena Ivanova’s understated performance, which scored the Best Actress prize at the Locarno International Film Festival, carries this stunning debut. — Beth Hanna