Angel Wagenstein

Angel Raymond Wagenstein (; 17 October 1922 – 29 June 2023) was a Bulgarian screenwriter 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. He was interned in a labour camp for Jews in Macedonia, but escaped from it. After a combat mission, he was arrested and condemned to death in 1944, but the execution was first delayed by the Anglo-American bombing of Sofia, which destroyed parts of the prison and forced the relocation of the inmates to another facility, and then prevented by the anti-fascist (mostly Communist) takeover and the roughly simultaneous invasion of the Soviet Red Army. 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 (the former East Germany Cinematography Center). He is author of over fifty screenplays for films, documentaries and cartoons. He became famous with his movies about Bulgarian Communists, especially partisans. His film Stars, shot in 1959 by 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.