Top 20 Alternative Picks for Cannes 2012: Ilian Metev’s Sofia’s Last Ambulance

Sofia’s Last Ambulance – Ilian Metev

Buzz: The only documentary in this year’s Critics’ Week section, and for that matter, only the second to compete in its 51-year history, Bulgarian filmmaker Ilian Metev picks a a mind-boggling, difficult to both film and forget subject matter – a social pandemic and heavy infrastructure problem that is serviced by everyday heroic folk in either the right, or wrong profession.

Gist: In a city where 13 ambulances struggle to serve a burgeoning population of several million, 47-year old Krassi Yordanov is our unlikely hero: chain-smoking and saving lives in a non-stop 48-hour shift. Krassi is the emergency doctor on one of Sofia’s last ambulances and today is the worst day of his life. This is a film about the regular working day of Dr. Krassi, nurse Mila and driver Plamen, a team working on an ambulance in Sofia, the capital of Bulgaria.