A Cold Coke in the Days of the Cold War

a documentary film how Coca-Cola broke trough the Iron curtain.


A film by:
Evgenia Atanassova and Irina Nedeva ( screenwriting, script and research) Director: Damjan Petrov
Camera: Venzizar Milenkov

Producer: Bulgarian National Television (BNT), Channel 1, 2006

This is a story of a battle - the battle between the propaganda type of economy and the free market economy, a battle between the ideological communist society and the entrepreneur spirit.

This is a story of how Coca-Cola has entered Bulgaria during the time of communist regime in the mid sixties.

Surprisingly Bulgaria happened to be the very first socialist country where Coca-Cola has succeeded to break the ideological rules by having a trade contract and opening bottling factories.

Till 1965 the communist propaganda described the drink as an alcoholic drink of the American soldiers. The contract was possible due to initiative of an ordinary man Mr. Toncho Michajlov, who has made the first contact with the Coca-Cola Company in 1965 in Paris with Mr. Alexander Makinsky.

A story about the unknown sides of the communist history and the time of the Cold war.

Unique archive materials - video and film on super 8 mm from 1965 given exclusively for the production by Mr. Francesco Tozi, plus print documents some of them for the first time.

This is a truly unknown story viewed through two angles – from the point of view of Bulgarians involved in the events and from the point of view of the Western participants.

29 September (Monday) 2008, 5.30 p.m.
Red hall
In Bulgarian, with English subtitles.
Tickets: 2/1 BGN

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