Variety film critic Guy Lodge has reviewed "Black Money for White Nights", the fifth feature from Bulgarian filmmakers Kristina Grozeva and Petar Valchanov, which premiered in the Crystal Globe competition at the Karlovy Vary festival. The largely positive review praises the film as a sharp, bitter tragicomedy about corruption, and matters because it positions the work as a likely contender for Bulgaria's international Oscar submission and part of a wider wave of Bulgarian cinema examining social inequality and systemic rot.

The film follows Gosha (Ivan Savov) and Marina (Tanya Shahova), a struggling sixtysomething couple who engage in petty bribery to supplement their meagre incomes as a railway conductor and a maternity nurse, stashing the cash in a kitchen tin. Having saved for a long-planned luxury trip to see the White Nights in St Petersburg — where Marina hopes to trace Russian roots — they are scammed out of their life savings by a bogus travel agency, set against the backdrop of Russia's 2022 invasion of Ukraine. The fallout drives the couple apart, exposing cracks in their marriage, with Lodge highlighting the leads' vulnerable performances and the directors' unsentimental yet compassionate gaze.