Nevena Kokanova

Acting

Nevena Kokanova

Born 1938-12-12 · Dupnitsa, Bulgaria

Nevena Kokanova (Bulgarian: Невена Коканова) (12 December 1938 – 3 June 2000) was a Bulgarian film actress. She was known as the "first lady of Bulgarian cinema." Her mother was from a well-known Austrian aristocratic family, and her father was a political prisoner. Kokanova was born in Dupnitsa, Bulgaria and is most renowned for her role as Lisa in The Peach Thief. She started her career at 18 as an apprentice actor with the Yambol Theater in Yambol, Bulgaria. In 1975 she was a member of the jury at the 9th Moscow International Film Festival. In 1980 she starred in and co-directed Three Deadly Sins with Lyubomir Sharlandzhiev. She died in Sofia.

Acting credits

Rootless Tree poster
7.0

Having remained alone in his village house, old Gatyo must move in with his son and daughter-in-law in their flat in the city. They receive him with great understanding and sympathy but cannot find the key to his heart. Torn out of his natural environment and left bewilderingly rootless, this good man cannot adapt himself to the urban way of life. He does not like the mayonnaise he is offered, does not know how to use the lift. The people hurrying in the streets seem to him indifferent, and some even sly and deceitful. He sees the city as a place full of hostile people and inanimate objects. He badly misses the warm human touch of his village. Death is the only possible solution to the tragic conflict of this peasant, crucified between the archaic and the modern, and unable to adapt to the urban lifestyle.

Rootless Tree

1974

The Weddings of Ioan Assen poster
8.3

The film takes us back into the times of the Second Bulgarian Kingdom - 13th century. The Bulgarian Emperor - Tsar Ioan Assen - is trying through several marriages to enlarge the State and to support the peace in it.

The Weddings of Ioan Assen

1975

On a Quiet Evening poster
7.0

Chased by the military police force, the partisans Boyka and Anton take refuge in a cave. A grenade explosion dislodges the rock, which seals off the passage.

On a Quiet Evening

1960

Memories of the Twin Sister poster
8.5

A family evacuates to the Bulgarian countryside during World War II

Memories of the Twin Sister

1976

Queen of Turnovo poster
8.5

The action takes place at the beginning of the 20th century in the provincial Bulgarian town, Turnovo. A rich young doctor suffers because of his love to his housemaid. Meanwhile the First World War is beginning.

Queen of Turnovo

1981

Canary Season poster
9.7

It's 1980. Malin is fatherless, angry, and in trouble. At 20, he's spent a year in jail for assaulting a lover of Lily, his mother. In her desk he finds a soldier's photograph and assumes he's found his father. He confronts the man, now a teacher, and gets nowhere. At home again, he mocks his mother. Finally, she tells him her grim story, from the year before his birth. We see a people's court, where Lily's parents seek justice for their grandchild to be. We follow Lily to a prison camp, to the city where she's told to inform on the only person who's been kind, to an asylum, and finally to her current poverty and loneliness. How will Malin respond to these revelations?

Canary Season

1993

Tobacco poster
5.6

Boris Morev dreams of money and power, he’ll do everything to reach the top, including leaving his beloved Irina, to marry the daughter of the local tobacco factory owner. With the death of his father-in-law and the illness of his wife, Morev becomes the new owner of "Nicotiana" and rules with an iron fist, resulting in massive labour strikes and murder. He ropes Irina back into his life, first as a mistress and later as his second wife, but his ambitions still come first as he plans on emerging as the biggest tobacco seller once the war is over. Irina’s love for Boris is fading and she finds a lover in one of the Germans Boris is trying to strike a deal with. Set against the backdrop of World War II and communist partisans fighting against the Nazi-allied Bulgarian monarchy, the film is a screen adaptation of the Bulgarian classic novel "Tobacco" released in 1954.

Tobacco

1962

Yazovetzat poster
8.5

A beautiful middle-aged French woman comes to Bulgaria for a vacation. In a village by the sea, she meets a local fisherman. He likes to draw. The Frenchwoman likes his paintings. They fall in love with each other.

Yazovetzat

Karambol poster
8.5

In a large provincial town, two friends Nasko and Raycho meet Emil, a conductor in the opera, who introduces them to Ana, an opera singer. Nasko and Ana fall in love. Nasko has to write a story for the newspaper about the irregular enrollment in college of Aneliya, the daughter of the local bigwig. A well-known director arrives from the capital for an opera premiere and makes advances to Ana. Aneliya comes to demand an explanation in Nasko's home. Ana finds her there and decides to take her revenge on him. She becomes intimate with the director. The story about the Aneliya case is ready, but as desk editor is drunk, Nasko fakes his OK signature. He sham is discovered. The relationships between the erstwhile friends are marred by insincerity, falsehood, tacit intrigues. Nasko plucks up courage to tell his friends the truth. In this way, he wins back Ana's love and he boy's trust.

Karambol

1966

Be Happy, Ani! poster
8.5

Ani, a charming young girl, is a driver at Sofia Airport. She sends a letter to her boyfriend Boyan, a worker at a large construction site. The letter contains a single word "yes". Boyan starts preparing for a wedding. The Soviet pilot Andrey will soon return home after several years spent working with his Bulgarian colleagues. They arrange a farewell tour of Bulgaria for him on which Ani has to drive him. Because of mistaken jealousy, Boyan tears up his sweetheart's letter.

Be Happy, Ani!

1961

Love poster
6.4

Maria is having great difficulty getting on with her parents because of their blind, consumerist approach to life. Traumatized by continuous family dramas, having experienced the disappointments of firs love, Maria decides to go up the mountain to a holiday home. There she meets a conceited architect, a shy teacher, a jurist, and a timid journalist (all of them representatives of the intelligentsia) who are domineered by the manager of the holiday home and his 'problems'. Maria's resignation changes into a rebellion against impersonal submission and sheep-like compliance with those who hold power.

Love

1972

Среднощна среща poster
NR

No synopsis available yet.

Среднощна среща

No artwork available
7.0

The upper class of the capital has been invited to a party. The guests discuss the retreat of the Germans on the Eastern Front. Havadzhieva, an attractive intellectual, recognizes that the interests of her class require action, not words.

Tango

1969

No artwork available
9.0

Natural minerals are found all over the world. They represent the wealth of the country they come from. This film conveys the beauty of minerals.

Crystals

1982

The Boy Turns Man poster
7.0

The action centers on Ran and his schoolmates who are in the last year of school. They are only a few days away from the day when they will have to make a decisive choice: what are they going to be, and what is more important, how are they going to live? In the whirlpool of meetings with different people and mainly with three women, the filmmakers are trying to see the future of their main character. His schoolmate Mariana wants to lead him into family life. The pop singer Neli is the very incarnation of adventurism. However, he is most deeply touched by the salesgirl in the near-by coffee shop Tintyava. This is a wordless affair in which each glance exchanged betrays the piercing excitement of impossible love.

The Boy Turns Man

1972

The Peach Thief poster
7.1

The wife of a Bulgarian POW camp's warden falls in love with a Serbian prisoner at the end of World War I.

The Peach Thief

1964

Taste of Almonds poster
9.0

A hairdresser Gerda has an affair with Dr Nikodimov, a married man past his prime. Savarinova has had her hair done by Gerda in fashionable style. She is ill at ease at a family party. Her sister Mina has been the cause of her anxiety, because the young scientist Belokozhov prefers young and unaffected Mina. They go out to the park and have fun by themselves. Meanwhile, Nikodimov goes to see Gerda in her flat. She tells him what has been preying on her mind during their liaison. Nikodimov's wife comes there but he turns her away. He tells Gerda that he will move in with her for good. Heartbroken, the girl turns him away. Nikodimov goes to the hospital. In his office, he takes out an ampule of cyanide and drains it with a resolute gesture. Mina and Belokozhov discuss love in the park. It starts raining. Laughing, a boy and a girl walk towards the dawn.

Taste of Almonds

1967

Galileo poster
6.3

A humble scientist from Padua proves that the Earth revolves and that it is not the center of the universe.

Galileo

1968

The Last Bachelor poster
7.7

The middle-aged poor painter Tsokov doesn't believe in marriage, something completely unacceptable in a cramped socialist society.

The Last Bachelor

1974

This Fine Mature Age poster
7.0

An older man of high social standing begins to understand that he's not as perfect as he believed.

This Fine Mature Age

1985

Little Tiger poster
9.0

The five-year-old kid Dimo must go to the kindergarten. He is not used to talking to the other kids and he has problems adjusting. His teacher gives him the task of taking care of aquarium. Dimo caused a flood, catches a old and stays at home for few days. Once day his parents take him to the zoo. His mother shows him the tiger cage and tells him that he looks as a little tiger. When Dimo goes back to the kindergarten, he makes a mess again, refuges to apologize and runs off. He walks around the streets of Sofia, plays on the swings in the park, goes to the distorted mirrors room, watches a soccer practice and becomes an unwilling participant in a TV show. The teachers in the kindergarten are worried about his disappearance. A search begins. Without suspecting anything, two young people take Dimo to a restaurant but have an accident on their way back. The young people run away and Dimo hides in telephone booth, from where he calls his house. His parents look for him with no success.

Little Tiger

1973

Don't Go Away! poster
7.4

The charming young man Ran is a director in a school in his hometown. His classmate Mariana is his wife. At the first glance, things are like, as they ought to be. In the world of untold words and timid gestures something important is missing - the understanding. He cannot succumb to the routine, hypocrisy and egoism. Ran sees every moment of his everyday life as a part of everlasting human strive for beauty and perfection, which brings him many troubles and causes conflicts with his colleagues and his friends. The intrigues and betrayal of a part of his colleagues during the visitation of a school inspector make him lose his patience. On a public place, he slaps the inspector who destroys the human dignity of the others. There is a court against Ran. He must leave the school. He leaves his wife Mariana who does not understand him. These misfortunes do not stop his search for real values, real work, real love, in another place, another town, another school.

Don't Go Away!

1976

The Three Deadly Sins poster
7.0

Pavel Pashev receives a package with three shrunk up apples - three vampire apples. According to the legend, he is doomed. Who sent the apple? For years, there has been a feud between Pavel and Kuzdo. Both of them are on age, when a man reflects on his past. Their conflict represents the different viewpoints of violence and freedom. Who is the sinner - the man who fought with honor for this world or the observer, the human register?

The Three Deadly Sins

1980

Circles of Love poster
10.0

A story about three brothers, Petar, Angel and Vasil, each one joins the fight against fascism in his own way.

Circles of Love

1972

Behind the camera