Stanko: urban legend or not?

Factual Questions
1

I was reading the following editorial in the Washington Post the other day: http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A20615-2002Sep29.html .

I’m curious about his claim in the beginning of the article that a filmmaker managed to get the protesters yelling about an imaginary character. Anyone else heard about this? It smacks of an urban legend to me.

2

It sounds really suss, particularly given the unnamed “independent film-maker” - but a clear candidate is the film Eating and Weeping (2002), which from its page on the IMDb features a lead character by the name of Stanko and by a search on google involves Bulgarians.