After a brief encounter with an unknown ticket inspector from Bourgas, French artist Eludie Huet returned to Bulgaria this month to make a film about her search for the man she thought she had fallen in love with.

Huet, who works as a video artist in Paris, arrived in Bulgaria for the first time in April. She came to visit friends and had vague plans to make a film. "I knew nothing about the country, so it was impossible to have any idea of a project beforehand," she said.

Towards the end of her two-week visit she made the eight-hour train journey from Bourgas to Koprivshtitsa. It was when the inspector came to check their tickets that Huet thought she experienced "coup de foudre," which translates roughly as "love at first sight."

"I saw him and was surprised because he was very cute and I hadn't seen such a young inspector before," she said. "Usually they are old and tired of their jobs but he was fresh and a little shy. I just looked at him and thought he was really nice."

The young inspector passed by their compartment every five or 10 minutes after this. He made eye contact with Huet each time and she was hooked. "I wanted to talk to him. I didn't know why but I was attracted to him."

A few hours later she went to look for him with some questions that her friends had written in Bulgarian.

"I found him in the corridor and immediately asked the first question: `Kak si?' (How are you?) He gave me a long answer that I didn't understand, so I asked the next question, which was `Can I film you?' He agreed and came to our compartment."

Huet hadn't prepared for the interview and was disappointed because she only asked him simple things such as "How long have you been an inspector?" and "Do you like your job?" "They were stupid questions and he was shy and intimidated by my friends speaking in French," she said.

Soon after, they arrived at Koprivshtitsa. Huet said goodbye to the inspector and the train continued to Sofia. "I was always thinking of him after that. I wanted to ask more questions." Her Bulgarian friends did not understand her reaction. "They told me that he had a strong Bourgas accent and seemed completely uninteresting," she said.

Four days later, she returned to France.

The result of her trip was an eight-minute film based on the concept of coup de foudre. It was shown in Roubaix's Centre of Contemporary Art and viewers were surprised that she hadn't used footage of the inspector. Instead she included brief images to give a suggestion of his presence. "People who saw the film were expecting to see the man. I did show him coming but you can't see exactly - it's him but it could be someone else."

For three months she was occupied by the idea of meeting him again and planned to return to Bulgaria and make a film of the search. "I wanted to know if I'd actually fallen in love or if I was idealizing him to give myself something to think about in France," said Huet. "He became my raison d'etre for that time but now I realize that the film itself is my raison d'etre."

Few of her friends understood her obsession with the distant ticket inspector, but Huet was lucid. "I think I'm always searching in my life and the inspector was a focus for me. I need to be attached to someone or something and this was a goal for me. He gave me a pretext to return to Bulgaria."

She arrived in Sofia three weeks ago and spent a lot of time filming in the capital and then at Irakli, on the Black Sea. It was not until towards the end of her visit that she and a friend eventually arrived in Bourgas. Although happy to get there she had immediate reservations. "I saw Bourgas and thought, `Oh he lives here - that's a problem.'"

At this point she began to understand that she had never wanted to find the inspector. What had fascinated her was the search. "I realized that what was interesting for me was the short time we spent in the train and that if I found him again it would break those moments," said Huet.

She and her friend ran into difficulties in the town when they rented a private room and found a group of men waiting there to rob them. They managed to escape but were unable to relax after the experience. The train station appeared to be full of strange characters and whenever Huet tried to film, people would gather around her.

They made some attempts to find the inspector but Huet's heart was no longer in it. She asked around but found that no one spoke English or French. All she had was a photograph of him but didn't want to show people because she was beginning to realize that the whole idea was ridiculous. "I almost threw away the picture just to simplify the search - to end the search. It finished at that point and felt very natural. I was in Bourgas and I had no wish to find him."

In the end, Huet spent only one day actively searching for the ticket inspector. She didn't find him but feels that she found something else. "Maybe I've realized that I don't need anyone. I've gained self-confidence - it's been like a voyage of self-discovery," she said.

She will leave Bulgaria with nine hours of film footage. "I have to reconsider the film's subject," she said. "It will be a search but the story of the inspector will only be half of the film. The work is just beginning."

The completed film will be around 26 minutes long and will include references to coup de foudre, the search for the inspector, and Bulgaria. "It's not especially important that it took place in Bulgaria," she said. "It's about all that you have in a foreign country. You are free to be different and can focus on new areas."

In the fall, the film will be shown in the Paris Project Room and then Huet plans to return to Bulgaria for a joint exhibition.