In a remote provincial town, Gana looks after the elderly with dementia, while trafficking ID cards on the black market.

At home, she provides for her jobless mother, with whom she hardly speaks. Her relationship with her car mechanic boyfriend is no shelter for love either – with sexual attraction vanished, intimacy is reduced to a morphine addiction.

Nothing seems to have consequences for the nurse’s conscience, not even the incidental murder of a patient, who threatens to expose her fraudulent deeds. Things start to shake up when Gana hears the music of Yoan, a new patient, whose ID card she’s trafficked. A growing empathy for the old man unlocks Gana’s drugged-up conscience and she is ready for change. But when Yoan is arrested for fraud, she learns that doing the right thing comes at a high price.

Ralitza Petrova’s feature debut is a raw tale about what it takes to survive in an uncaring and complicit society that bears all the scars and marks of decades of oppressive rule.

Godless was awarded the Golden Leopard at the 2016 Locarno International Film Festival, as well as the Best Actress award and Ecumenical Jury Prize.

Bulgaria/Denmark/France 2016 Dir Ralitza Petrova 99 min

New East Cinema is a film series presented in collaboration with Calvert 22 Foundation, curated by The New Social: a cultural collective bringing contemporary cinema from eastern Europe and beyond to London.