‘Triumph’ Review: Maria Bakalova Seeks an Alien Connection in Bulgaria’s Eccentric Oscar Submission

The fall of communism in Bulgaria wasn’t a clean break, exactly: With the country’s Communist Party having relinquished its political monopoly in 1989 to make way for a parliamentary democracy, it still won the country’s first free elections the following year. The panic brought on by unfamiliar liberties spirals to chaotic effect in “Triumph,” a thoroughly singular political satire from Bulgarian directing duo Kristina Grozeva and Petar Valchanov, in which old-school power structures and preposterous new-age thinking grind each other down to a vain stalemate. Original and outlandish if only fitfully funny, the film rests considerably on the deadpan comic stylings of Oscar-nominated star (and producer) Maria Bakalova, returning to her homeland for the first time since 2021’s “Women Do Cry.”

Inspired by real events — even if little about its frenzied, heightened tone suggests as much — “Triumph” is the concluding entry in Grozeva and Valchanov’s stated “newspaper clippings trilogy,” in which each film is expanded from some sensational tabloid item in Bulgaria’s media history. (The previous entries were 2014’s “The Lesson” and 2016’s “Glory” — the latter was the country’s official Oscar submission, as is “Triumph” this year.) Certainly, this peculiar tale of a collapsing military mission in pursuit of extra-terrestrial contact can feel pulled from the pages of the National Enquirer or its nearest Balkan equivalent, with a bizarro storytelling sensibility that distinguishes the film from its more muted predecessors.

It begins on a scene of bumbling futility, as an army unit digs a sizable pit in a khaki-colored stretch of countryside in western Bulgaria, only to receive immediate instructions to fill it up and dig another nearby. It is 1990, a nation is in transition, and it’s fair to say national resources are not being used wisely. Under the command of General Zlatev (Ivan Savov) and Colonel Platnikov (Julian Vergov), the laboring soldiers are on a top-secret operation to uncover a mysterious artifact allegedly buried there by aliens. Also overseeing proceedings is frizzy-haired medium Nyagolova (Margita Gosheva), personal psychic to Zlatev: Amid burbling mumbo-jumbo about “reaching the seventh zone” and “deactimination hazard control,” she more plainly insists that finding the artifact and channeling alien intelligence will be the making of the new Bulgaria.

The supposed secret weapon in this wild goose chase is Slava (Bakalova), Platnikov’s naive and emotionally fragile young daughter, whom Nyagovola believes has extraordinary extrasensory powers. Or claim to believe, anyway. Quite who is pulling the wool over whose eyes gets harder to determine as the project grows more addled and extended — and as Slava’s loose lips (and unbound desire for one young private) further chip away at whatever scant integrity it had to begin with. As perhaps the one innocent in all this, representative of a population buffeted by muddled political ideologies, Bakalova brings a game, physically elastic dizziness to the film that works in contrast to the terse, barking farce enacted by her elders — her face a clear pool of bemusement and wonder, eventually hardening into distrust.

Taking more truths than one might think possible from an ignoble chapter of history for Bulgaria’s Ministry of Defense — the two-year, psychic-guided excavation of the Tsarichina Hole, eventually abandoned due to tightened finances — Grozeva and Valchanov’s script, co-written with Decho Taralezhkov, works up a heady lather of absurdity early on, slightly running out of farcical momentum, before matters take a darker and more nihilistic turn. Even at 97 minutes, “Triumph” feels a little stretched, its second half repeating satirical jabs that have already effectively hit home.

As an atmospheric exercise, however, it’s escalatingly claustrophobic, as Krum Rodriguez’s lensing gradually sinks into the murk of the dig, all light subsumed by shades of tan and taupe. Yorgos Lanthimos’ regular editor Yorgos Mavropsaridis keeps the pace jittery and febrile, less concerned with unfolding the narrative than crumpling it as it goes. Audiences, aptly enough, are liable to feel as adrift in this senseless mission as its operators eventually do as well.