Zelena karta (2001)

In two Muslim villages in the southern part of Bulgaria the only livelihood of people is growing tobacco. They live on credit for most of the year and pay back their debt when the stacks of dried tobacco leaves are sold. Most of the villagers dream for “the luck to be picked up by computer” – to win the green card that would provide a visa and employment in the United States. Sixty families have already been chosen by the computer which the remaining villagers believe “must be from” their village. Old grannies sit knitting by their video players and indulge home videos displaying their children and grandchildren in America reading English, eating in excess and throwing away the leftovers. An old lady tells her experience at the Atlantic shore “babysitting” her grandchildren and admires a shopping mall “as big as our village”. A pharmacist who applied for a green card and was lucky to win, but could not decide on leaving her good profession and status and leap into the unknown shows her issued visa with a sentiment of regret for missing her chance to see life in America and the Statue of Liberty. The former shop keeper who returns with his wife to visit relatives laments his children who would never come back to the village.