Film 'Lust' Premieres at the Berlin Festival Exposing the Layers of Lust and Mourning
Love may be in the air this Valentine's Day, but Berlin should brace itself to be embraced by 'Lust'. A probation officer encounters her past through an unlikely journey of control and intimacy following the death of her long-absent father, in Ralitza Petrova's second feature film of the same name. The film will have its world premiere in the Forum program at the Berlin International Film Festival on Monday, February 16. 'Lust' follows probation officer Lilian, whose life is regulated by clinical precision, keeping her body, emotions, and desires under strict control. Summoned back to her hometown to settle the death of a distant father, what should be a brief administrative detour unfolds into unresolved debts, institutional inertia, and a decomposing body stuck in bureaucratic limbo. The film explores a plunge into proximity - with grief, flesh, and long-numbed desire. An uneasy connection with a Shibari expert offers a practice of controlled vulnerability, where intimacy is negotiated, not promised. Shibari is a form of Japanese rope bondage.
Starring Snejanka Mihaylova, along with Nikola Mutafov, Mihail Milchev, and Alexis Atmadjov, 'Lust' is the result of a collaborative production between Petrova's Aporia Filmworks in Bulgaria, with partnership of Nikolay Todorov and Poli Angelova from Screening Emotions in Bulgaria, and co-production of Snowglobe from Denmark and Silver Films from Sweden, with support from the Bulgarian National Film Center, Danish Film Institute, Film I Vast, and Eurimages. Inwave Films is handling the movie's international sales.
Petrova herself explains the emotional genesis of 'Lust', revealing: 'In 2016, my father passed away - someone I barely knew. What followed was not conventional mourning, but the mourning of an already established absence. 'Lust' emerged from that space as a way to frame what is missing and how it persists.' Conceived as a mid-life psychodrama, 'Lust' moves between mystery, fantasy, and ghost story - not to resolve the absence, but to trace how it destabilizes control and, sometimes, creates an opening.
The Hollywood Reporter can now exclusively present the trailer for 'Lust', which hints at the contained mix of trauma, emptiness, tenderness, and austerity that awaits us. Watch closely!