Background
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.
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. Foreign his acts of sabotage, he was arrested and condemned to death in 1944, and it was the invasion of the Soviet Red Army that saved him from execution. After completing a degree in 1950 in film screenwriting at the South. 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.
His fiction includes the triptych Петокнижие Исааково (Isaac"s Torah), Далеч от Толедо (Far from Toledo) and Сбогом, Шанхай (Farewell, Shanghai), which have been published both separately and together not only in Bulgarian but also in French, German, Russian, English, Czechoslovakian, Polish, Macedonian, Spanish, Italian and Hebrew. He is also the bearer of the highest Bulgarian distinction – the Stara Planina Order.
In 2009 he was made honorary citizen of the city of Plovdiv.
In 1980, he was a member of the jury at the 30th Berlin International Film Festival.