The plot follows the emotional journey of middle-aged Bulgarian Anna, arriving at the dark Austrian house of lonely aging Johanna, who greets her with cold hostility. Anna finds solace in reviving the overgrown garden. After clashes and confrontations, through flowers, food, and shared moments of tenderness, a quiet transformation unfolds. Tested at different moments, their bond endures. The two women discover a special kinship, redefining what home, family, and care truly mean.

“The idea came from a real encounter - on a bus ride from Sofia to Vienna, I met a group of Bulgarian caregivers traveling back and forth to support their families. That’s how I met the woman who inspired Anna’s character. Her resilience and silence stayed with me, and I started to imagine the story entitled Garden Alley, in which the ‘alley’ is the emotional space between two women who barely share a common language, but slowly learn to connect,” Olga Koleva told FNE. She also explained that her principal aim was “to create a place where plants are planted and cared for, but also a metaphor through which life finds the strength to grow again.”

“For me as a producer, it is a special pleasure to work with Olga on Garden Alley, as it is a deeply human story about overcoming emotional scars. It is also a truly cross-border project equally involving Eastern and Western European perspectives. From a production standpoint, we face a beautiful challenge - building the film’s third main character, the garden. Over the course of nearly a year, from winter to summer, it will grow and blossom, mirroring the women’s inner transformation”, Pavlina Jeleva from Geopoly added.

The project has already received development support from the Bulgarian National Film Center and has attracted the interest of the Talent Academy of the Linz International Short Film Festival. In collaboration with SFC | Rendez-vous Industry in May 2025, during the Cannes Film Festival, it hosted the First Features LAB Pitch Session. Later on, Garden Alley became the only Bulgarian participant in the Warsaw Co-production Forum (14-17 October 2025), one of the two main sections of the Warsaw Industry Days. There, the original idea gained visibility and received strong approval from potential co-producers in Central Europe.

According to producer Pavlina Jeleva: “We are at the beginning of the financing process and are about to apply for various funds. The participation of a co-producer from Austria is crucial for this project, and their involvement would make possible the first feature coproduction of this kind with Bulgaria. We already have a confirmed interest from Serbia’s SEE Film PRO with whom we coproduced Bojan Vuletic’s critically acclaimed Reqiuem for Mrs. J."

Production Information:

Producer:
Geopoly (Bulgaria)

Credits:
Director: Olga Koleva
Scriptwriters: Nevena Kertova, Georgi Ivanov