Bulgarian spy thriller where bullets are fake but the tension is very, very real.
The Bulgarian intelligence service has information that the top agent Peron is to arrive in Bulgaria. The higher official of the counter intelligence Ivan with an alias Y 17 is to investigate. Peron has to meet his local contact, the former ship captain Rudnev. The young Mina is accommodated in Rudnev's home. Rudnev figures that she is counterintelligence and agrees to cooperate with the task force. Soon after, Peron meets Mina and an eccentric engineer, fired from the job. The young man is the deep undercover agent Y 117. Peron tests the man. He tells him that Mina is an agent of the Bulgarian counterintelligence, and gives him a gun to kill her. Y 117 shoots Mina but the bullet was a blank. After that Y 117 should leave the country with Peron.
Direction
Tzankov wrings Hitchcockian dread from Bulgarian state-approved resources.
Writing
Nested identity games: Y-17, Y-117, who's real, who's expendable.
Director
Vili Tzankov
Trivia, insights & behind the scenes
Made during Bulgaria's 'Golden Age' of cinema under state subsidy, Y-17 smuggles genuine moral ambiguity past censors who preferred clear ideological victories.
The triple-Y naming (Y-17, Y-117) was reportedly accidental—script revisions multiplied agents until the director leaned into the confusion as a feature.
BG
