VAKLUSH

VAKLUSH – Bulgaria, 2023, 100 min., Documentary

Director: Nikolay Vassilev

Writers: Nikolay Vassilev, Lilia Angelova, Tanya Cheshmedjieva

The film features: Peter Stoyanov – President of Bulgaria, 1997-2002,

Dr. Ilko Semerdjiev – Minister of Health for the period of 1999-2001,

Prof. Dr. Maria Slavova – lawyer and lecturer at Sofia University “St. Kliment Ohridski”, Sofia, Bulgaria, Assoc. Prof. Dr. Ognyan Minchev – Political Scientist and Doctor of Sociological Sciences, Prof. Ivan Zhelev – theologian,

Assoc. Prof. Dr. Ivan Bachvarov – physicist and lecturer at Sofia University “St. Kliment Ohridski”, Assoc. Prof. Dr. Kiril Kolikov – mathematician and lecturer at Plovdiv University “Paisii Hilendarski”

“Vaklush” is a documentary, filmed during the period of 1998 until 2022 and contains unseen archival footage from the life of the famous spiritual leader and Teacher Vaklush Tolev. The film is dedicated to the 100th anniversary of his birth and is a story about the life path and ideas of one of the most enigmatic personalities of Bulgaria.

Vaklush Tolev is a theologian by education, lecturer and author of numerous volumes on religious, philosophical, cultural and historical topics. Having gone through the prisons and camps of the communist regime, for him suffering does not exist, but is rather development. Persecuted by the repressive State Security authorities as an “enemy of the people,” he insists that evil does not exist, but is rather unevolved good. A graduate theologian, he comes to the idea that man is not a sinner, as religions teach, but a god in evolution.

After the fall of communism in Bulgaria in 1989, he was invited to teach at Plovdiv and Sofia universities. There, in his lectures on the history of religions, he often reminded his students of the inscription on the temple of Delphi; “Know thyself and thou shalt know the gods and the world.” He himself experienced this knowledge and formulated his own teaching, which he called “The Way of Wisdom”.