Eye For Film >> Movies >> Wild Strawberries (2025) Film Review
Some films don’t so much tell a story as exhale it. Bulgarian director Tatyana Pandurska’s first fiction feature is one of them: a tender, sun-dappled comedy-drama that breathes in the scent of the Rhodope Mountains and exhales memories of belonging, inheritance, and quiet deceit.
American-Bulgarian Daphne (Vanina Kondova) returns to her late grandmother’s village in Bulgaria to sell the family estate to her cousin Orlin (Ivan Yurukov). What begins as a simple transaction unfolds into a more sensorial, ambiguous tale, where myths of looms that resurrect the dead intermingle with the local centenarians’ stories of her father and Orlin’s quiet manipulations.
“This isn’t your world, this is the Balkans,” a businessman snarks – a line neither glorified nor disputed, instead encapsulating a tender irony and regional self-awareness. Pandurska resists grand political statements, opting instead for a tranquil gaze at generational distance and rural identity in flux.
The film’s emotional peaks are carefully placed, but some narrative threads risk fermenting under the summer sun: ripe, but slightly untamed. Still, Pandurska’s control over tone and atmosphere is assured, and nature itself becomes the quiet guide of Daphne’s internal transformation. Yet one wonders whether, beyond the wisdom of the elders, true change can occur by simply returning to one’s roots, or if the magic of homecoming hides a certain illusion.
Wild Strawberries isn’t merely about returning home; it’s about recognising that roots grow in two directions – backward into memory and forward into possibility. Pandurska captures that duality with a sensuous precision that lingers like the aftertaste of freshly picked wild strawberries.
Reviewed on: 13 Oct 2025
