The Lesson

In a small Bulgarian town, Nade is an honest, hard-working elementary school teacher struggling to keep her life together. Her unemployed, alcoholic husband has secretly spent their mortgage payements on booze, and now the bank is threatening to auction off the house where they live with their young daughter. The agency where she translates legal documents to English for extra cash is going under and unable to pay her what she's due, and a thief in her class has stolen the last few dollars out of her purse. With few options left, she solicits help from a local loan shark who is happy to give her what she needs at a steep price. With the reposession looming, Nade will resort to measures her former self, untouched by the realities of economic desperation and moral compromise, would have found depraved, as she makes one last extreme effort to secure the money she needs.