ABOUT THE STORY
The shortest way to describe this story is to say that it is a quest for redemption. It is that, to be sure – but it is so much more than that!
To start with, this is a memoir of true events, which I either personally experienced, or observed during the first 20 plus years of my life behind the Iron Curtain – in Soviet-occupied Bulgaria. The characters are built on real people – most of whom happen to be members of my immediate family.
Redemption In Red is a tale, where I, and my writing partner, Mikhail Iliev, aimed to not only construct a technically solid Protagonist’s external and internal journeys. We also were resolved to display eloquently the profound devastation that a political system, short of checks and balances and relying on absolute control, subjugation, minimization, and manipulation can have on the human soul.
We hope Redemption In Red will resonate with the viewer first and foremost as the simple story of a man looking for a truth, and finding pain, tragedy, devastation but also peace and forgiveness in the quest. We also hope it will serve as a vivid reminder to nostalgic daydreamers, contemporary sympathizers, and poorly informed young generation that this road ends always in nothing but a wasteland of desolation, pain, and suffering.
Lastly, a word on drug trafficking as sanctioned national policy for the Communists. This was the sole element of our story that was not directly experienced or witnessed firsthand, though it is amply supported by evidence and witness accounts of our confidantes. Yet we felt strongly we had to use it to both lay bare the rotten core of the system and to show that history will repeat itself if it goes unheeded. No need to go farther than the recent indictment of Venezuela’s Nicolas Maduro & Co. by the Department of Justice to see our point. When a totalitarian regime, any totalitarian regime, finally breaks down and inevitably runs out of money, it almost always resorts to the blueprint invented and mastered by the Cold War Soviet regimes: flood the detested West with drugs and use the proceeds to somehow save the economy.
