When Yugoslavia ceased to exist as a country in 1991, the six republics within that nation – Croatia, Montenegro, Serbia, Bosnia & Herzegovina, Slovenia and Macedonia – split up into individual countries but several of them experienced ethnic conflicts and internal strife that erupted into war. Some of the worse infighting and loss of human life took place in the Bosnia, Serbia and Croatia regions between 1991 and 1995 but chaotic conditions continued to affect the six republics up to 2001. Macedonia was spared from most of the war but people in that country lived under the constant threat of impending chaos and some individual feuds could easily have led to a full blown revolution such as the situation depicted in Milcho Manchevski’s Pred Dozhdot (English title: Before the Rain, 1994). The first Macedonian film to receive international recognition and acclaim, Manchevski’s feature debut, however, is not an attempt to delve into the social and political issues that resulted in the Yugoslav Wars or a docu-drama that puts the ethnic conflicts into a contextual frame. Instead, he takes a poetic but accessible approach that creates empathy for the victims and their families in a way that makes it just as timely and relevant today as it was in 1994.
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Cinema Sojourns 