“In a nice little restau­rant in Istan­bul, we were having dinner with friends from var­i­ous Balkan coun­tries - a Greek, a Mace­don­ian, a Turk, a Serb, and me, a Bul­gar­i­an. There I heard the song whose story is told in the film. As soon as we heard the song, we all start­ed hum­ming it, each of us in his own lan­guage. Every­one claimed that the song came from his own coun­try. Then we start­ed a fierce fight - whose song is it? I knew from my child­hood that the song was Bul­gar­i­an. I wanted to find out why the others also claimed the song as their own.” 

Full of irony and barbed humour, WHOSE IS THIS SONG? is a road movie across the Balka­ns, which gives a micro­cosm of the area’s infa­mous ethnic rival­ries through the story of a song every­body claims as his own. Trav­el­ling through Turkey, Greece, Mace­do­nia, Alba­nia, Bosnia, Serbia, and Bul­gar­ia, Adela Peeva explores the many claims people make about the nation­al ori­gins of the song. She also sug­ges­tive­ly reveals the many genres the lilt­ing melody falls into: love song, reli­gious hymn, patri­ot­ic tune, and so on.