Angel Wagenstein

Who is Angel Wagenstein?

Angel Raymond Wagenstein is a Bulgarian film director and author. Wagenstein was born in Plovdiv, Bulgaria, but spent his childhood in France where his Jewish family emigrated for political reasons due to their leftist politics.

Angel Wagenstein returned to Bulgaria due to an amnesty, and as a student at a lyceum, where he joined an anti-fascist group. For his acts of sabotage, he was arrested and condemned to death in 1944, and it was the invasion of the Soviet Red Army that saved him from execution.

After completing a degree in 1950 in film screenwriting at the S. A. Gerasimov All-Union State Institute for Cinematography in Moscow, he worked as a screenplay writer for the Bulgarian Cinematography Center and for the DEFA Film Studio. He is author of over fifty screenplays for films, documentaries and cartoons. He became famous with his movies about Bulgarian Communists, especially guerrillas.

His film Stars, shot in 1959 by the German director Konrad Wolf, was awarded the Special Jury Prize at the 1959 Cannes Film Festival. In 1980, he was a member of the jury at the 30th Berlin International Film Festival.