Amman, April 6 — The Cinema Committee at the Abdul Hameed Shoman Foundation will screen the Bulgarian film The Unknown Soldier’s Patent Leather Shoes, directed by Rangel Valchanov, tomorrow, Tuesday, at 6:30 PM in the Foundation’s cinema hall in Jabal Amman.
The film opens with documentary footage of the Changing of the Guard at Buckingham Palace. Soldiers march in polished shoes, and Mony, a middle-aged Bulgarian journalist (played by the director himself), stands among the crowd, wearing headphones and holding a microphone and recorder. While observing, he accidentally presses the play button instead of record, releasing a traditional song sung by villagers during harvest season. Suddenly, past and present begin to merge, alternating between military ceremonies at the palace and black-ink drawings, scenes of harvest in his remote village, and memories of childhood, family, and community life—rituals, traditions, and simple daily activities—set against the backdrop of World War II.
The film is highly personal, revisiting the director’s childhood through a world blending realistic images and a child’s imagination. A central scene depicts a village wedding, where contrasting characters, the “White Aunt” and the “Black Uncle”, become symbolic representations of beauty and ugliness, refinement, and primitiveness in Bulgarian spiritual heritage. Throughout, the film flows seamlessly between birth and death, weddings and funerals, joy and sorrow, reality and imagination, war and peace.
Produced in 1979, the film features no professional actors and is celebrated for its poetic and unconventional storytelling, merging personal memory, historical reflection, humor, nostalgia, and political commentary.