Before the rain = Pred dozhdot

Subtitled ‘A Tale in Three Parts’, Milcho Manchevski’s debut feature film tells three stories dealing with the ancestral ethnic rivalry eating at the heart and soul of the newly formed republic of Macedonia. The first tale follows the fate of young Orthodox monk Kiril (Gregoire Colin) as he attempts to shelter a young Albanian girl from the wrath of the local villagers, thus unleashing the full might of a long-standing ethnic feud onto the monastery. The second tale is set in London where Anne (Katrin Cartlidge) is considering leaving her husband to live with Aleksander (Rade Serbedzija), a world-weary war correspondent, who has just returned just from Bosnia. The last tale documents Aleksander’s road back to the Macedonian village of his youth. Tired of photographing war, Aleksander, finds his home on the brink, with tensions between Macedonian and Albanian villagers at an all time high. (Awards: Winner of the Best Film Prize at the 1994 Venice Film festival). Manchevski was at pains to explain at the time of release that his film was not a documentary on Macedonia or the Balkans, as the tension described in ‘Before the Rain’, could erupt anywhere, anytime. In Macedonian with English subtitles.