LOGLINE

Frank Remley just can’t get it started. When the young man gets stranded in a car by a city highway, a strange figure appears, ready to help him. Strange events starts happening and Frank finds himself in an absurd series of adventures and misfits. Is he going to fix his car and live according to the instructions, or he will find his own way to the exit?

With hints of Dante, Haruki Murakami, Aki Kaurismaki, Charles Dickens and Roy Andersson, Idling, is a delightfully bittersweet absurdist comedy about learning to take the wheel of life and drive into the unknown and unpredictable fragility and beauty of living

Synopsis

Frank Remley’s car engine just won’t start. Stuck near a highway, Remley meets a mysterious stranger dressed as a canary, who invites him to a giant parking infrastructure to repair his car. The crazy stranger (Barry the canary) acts as if he cares for Frank’s wellbeing and talks to him in a distracted philosophical way. Remley follows the stranger reluctantly and soon he discovers that this is not a regular parking.

In the seven storeys of the parking lot, Remley crosses paths with different strangers such as a man who drives a toy car, sex-obsessed teenagers, a loner, a family couple playing table tennis, a man who lives in the trunk of his car singing ‘Crash Test Dummies’ songs, a punk sculptor with a statue on the roof of her car etc.

Director’s Statement

Winter. A cityscape that could be in any city in the world. A young man, Frank Remley, cannot start his car. It is already night, he is obviously late for something, and it is freezing cold. The wheels spin. The car drifts but does not move. Thus begins the film “Idling”. Everything goes wrong after this opening scene. A peculiar character appears, calling himself “Cardinal Barry”, dressed in strange red clothes. He offers his help, gets behind the wheel, and the car starts. The moment Frank sits in the driverʼs seat, the car stops again.

Frankʼs only relief comes from the philosophizing and moralizing Cardinal Barry, who miraculously appears from a parking lot not far. From this point on, the plot becomes chaotic. The story was inspired by Danteʼs “Purgatory” (the parking lot has seven levels), Kafkaʼs “The Trial” (a rather absurd scene between Frank and the parking lot controller seems like it could have been an out take from Kafka ), and by “the lost souls” from the films of Aki Kaurismaki and Roy Andersson. Frank is a loser. He goes into the parking lot, and he gets lost. He goes in to fix his car, but it soon becomes clear that it’s Frank who has broken down and needs repairs. Cardinal Barry appears like a suspect but well-intentioned guru, who dispenses another piece of advice and spits out clichéd wisdom like a “life coach,” then disappears again and again. His benevolence is always followed by even more chaos for Frank. We donʼt  learn much about Frank Remley until the end of the film.

Nikolay Mutafchiev

Lubomira Stoyanova

Short bio of Producer

Lyubomira Vasileva Stoyanova (Piperova) is a Bulgarian director/producer working in international projects such as:
“Flesh” 90 min., drama, co-producer Samsara, supported by National Film Center “Self-Portrait” (Bauk) directed by Goran Radovanovi¢, co-production: Serbia, Bulgaria, with the support of the National Film Center Bulgaria and Serbia, in post-production Animation film “Eli, Bimzal and the Water of Life”, directed by Angel Manov, supported by NFC Bulgaria.