Hristo Ganev(1924-2021)

Hristo Ganev is a Bulgarian writer and film director. He was a member of the partisan unit "Chavdar" and took active participation in the antifascist resistance. Outstanding among the antifascist films was the film When We Were Young (1961), directed by Binka Zhelyazkova, and based on the script of Hristo Ganev. In 1963, Ganev filmed a documentary about Algeria entitled Holiday of Hope, a sensitive poetic essay on war and freedom and then he fell silent. In the comebacks after 1970, the names of Hristo Ganev and Valeri Petrov were conspicuous by their absence. They were expelled from the Union of Bulgarian Writers and the Communist Party in 1971 for refusing to condemn Alexander Solzhenitsyn. Ganev - truly member of a "lost generation" - could wipe out the 10 wasted years. Howsoever he wrote many scripts for the animation films, especially for his son of low Anri Kulev - Hypothesis (1976), Bagpipe (1982), Safari (1984), The Straw man (2001), as well and the scripts for the films The Swimming Pool (1977), The Big Night Bathe (1980), and On the Roofs at Night (1988), directed by his wife Binka Zhelyazkova.