Venice Film Festival 2025, review of movie Made in EU

March 2020: COVID-19 makes its appearance in Europe. In a Bulgarian town, the alleged spreader is Iva (a poised Gergana Pletnyova): she works in a factory producing garments for major brands, earning pittance wages. The owner is Italian, and Iva – desperate not to lose her meager salary – pretends to be well despite experiencing infection symptoms. Witch hunting becomes the film's central theme when, after most employees fall ill, Iva stands accused of both bringing the virus and introducing it to the town (Ivaylo Hristov). While she appears to be patient zero, her hospital doctor disagrees: having not left the city in five years, it's unlikely she's that despised patient. More plausible is that the factory owner is responsible, having visited Bergamo two weeks earlier.

But the vortex of accusations against her intensifies and, reminiscent of 17th century witch hunts, the accusers plant three pickaxes on her son's car (Todor Kotsev) – who is also beaten – and shatter her home's windows with a stone.

Director Stephan Komandarev's intent in *Made in EU* was perhaps to expose capitalism's greed exploiting Bulgarian workers to produce designer clothing. What emerges instead is a crystalline rotation of human obtuseness, which still today attacks the weakest to avoid reasoning about a problem's true cause. The scapegoat remains ever useful, and a pandemic period proves particularly convenient for entangling blame.

*Made in EU* is not a perfect film, but it succeeds in rising to a metaphor for hatred: and perhaps the designer clothes we covet aren't as innocent as we might think.