According to the European Union's planning, the shortest way from the Black Sea to the Adriatic coast and further down toward southern Italy leads from the Bulgarian port city Burgos through Macedonia and on into the Albanian port Durres. A route meant to bring together 926 kilometers of Europe, whose populations had been politically separated for centuries. So far, however, only a fraction of the infrastructural project has been realized. Boris Despodov decides to set off on this journey anyway. Shortly before Macedonia he leaves the road and gets on a train, which takes three hours to get through the last 30 kilometers to the border. The new, old neighbors find it difficult to come together. In northern Bulgaria no one has any idea what "an Albanian" might be, on picturesque Lake Ohrid prejudicial rumors are being spread about stolen Mercedes.
Corridor #8 brings snapshots from the edge of pot-holed asphalt slopes and green fields, over which intercontinental traffic was one day meant to roll, together with a tragicomic travel report from a region in which the dream of a little happiness, small shops that guarantee survival, set up mutual animosities and all sorts of oddities in everyday life. A portrait of a somewhat different vision of a unified Europe.
Bernd Buder
Production: Agitprop, Sofia
Screenplay: Boris Despodov
Camera: Boris Missirkov, Georgi Bogdanov
Format: HDCam, Color
Running time: 74 min.
Languages: Bulgarian, Macedonian, Albanian, English
