The violent death of television journalist Victoria Marinova cast a stark spotlight not only on the widespread corruption in the city of Ruse and all over Bulgaria but also on the unsafe working conditions for journalists as well as on violence against women. The debate, however, silenced abruptly after only 48 hours, when Severin K., a 21-year-old man of Romani descent, was arrested as the perpetrator.

Applying an artistic as well as documentary approach, Vienna-based photographer Eugenia Maximova challenges this convenient silence. Maximova addresses this larger socio-political context. In addition, she looks at the emotional repercussions because Maximova is also personally affected: the murdered journalist had been her sister-in-law and friend. Silent River thus seeks to raise questions as much as it documents a personal journey of grief and loss, of anger and despair. Maximova captures elegiac views of the city, empty spaces, many of which in a desolate state yet not without beauty. The project seeks to map out a subjective topography of the murder in that it follows not one but two trajectories: that of Victoria Marinova and that of her alleged murderer as they both move through the post-Communist cityscape until their paths cross on the banks of the Danube. In doing so, a third trajectory emerges: that of the artist herself.