Koziqt rog

The first remake of a Bulgarian film The Goat Horn revisits a Nikolai Haitov story on which the most popular and critically acclaimed Bulgarian film of all time (shot by Metodi Andonov in 1972) was based. Concentrating on human side of the story while downplaying its nationalist elements, helmer Nikolai Volev delivers a thoroughly enjoyable if not emotionally helped picture do brisk business onshore, and art house pickups could follow abroad. At time of Ottoman rule in Bulgaria, a small family of Christian shepherds is brutally attacked by the local overlord Osman Bey and two of his men. The men rape the shepherd's beautiful young wife and kill her by piercing her throat with a curly goat horn, while he and their little girl Maria look on in horror. Traumatized by the sight Maria loses her ability to speak and grows up wild and little crazy. Her father driven half mad raises her in a giant cave in the mountains. As she grows into adolescence he cuts her hair, dresses her in sheepskins and teaches her to kill in cold blood.

At last Maria is ready to carry out her father's revenge. They abduct the two Turks who attacked them many years ago and kill of each of them with a goat horn. But Maria's budding sexuality drives her father into paroxysms of incestuous lust he is barely able to repress. His jealousy becomes their undoing when she falls in love with a lonesome Muslim shepherd. Scriptwriters have made one significant change to the tale: The awkward shepherd who becomes Maria's first lover is no longer a Christian but a Muslim. This talent twist gives the father's decade long revenge added irony while deflecting the simplistic good Christian-bad Turk model.