The First Journey ( Macedonia)

With a shriek birds, flee across the black sky, people are silent, my blood aches from waiting ... Mesha Selimovic.

“Before The Rain” ( 1993), by Mancheviski

Before the Rain (1993), written and directed by Macedonian Milcho Mancheviski, is a foreign film attempting to depict the issues that Albanian and Macedonian people face. It is the story of photographer who can not seem to figure out where he belongs and what he should be doing. It is divided into three parts that are chronologically misplaced. The movie itself appears to be not well thought out in the fact that the out-of-order segments could not reconnect even if they were placed in the correct order. This is not “Pulp Fiction”. The movie itself defies time, truth, and logic. The segments are labeled “Words”, “Faces”, and “Pictures”. In “Words”, a young monk (Kiril) for unknown reason has taken a vow of silence among other monks who are speaking. One night, he returns to his bedroom to discover what looks like a young boy who turns out to be a young Albanian girl (Zamira) who has murdered a very important Macedonian man for unknown reasons. Rather than report her to the head monk, he lies to everyone and protects her. He falls in love. When armed Macedonians come looking for her, they terrorize the monastery, but the head monks swears that she is not there. When he discovers that Kiril has lied, he expels them both from the safety of the monastery. However, they both are captured by armed Albanians, who are lead by Zamira’s grandfather who is angered by her actions that may start a war. Her grandfather brutally beats her while others watch. He tells Kiril to leave, and out of fear, Zamira tries to flee with him, but her brother shoots her in the back. In “Faces”, we have Anne, an agent in London, who has begun a love affair with a photographer that she represents. His name is Aleksandra. He is Macedonian and he has shown her some pictures of the murders of Kiril and Zamira. She is moved, but refuses to commit to him because she has not divorced her estranged husband. Frustrated, Aleksandar leaves London to return to Macedonia. Anne invites her husband to dinner and tells him that she is pregnant by him but wants a divorce( Why tell him if you want a divorce?). While they are setting there, a Yugoslavian gets into an argument with an enemy. The enemy leaves and returns to the restaurant with a gun and kills many innocent people including Anne’s husband (No need for a divorce now). In “Picture”, we see Aleksandar in Macedonia and he goes to his village. He is looking for his high-school sweetheart whom is now an Albanian widower with one child (Zamira, how she was killed by her brother is beyond me... maybe a step). Zamira’s mother and grandfather bring Aleksandar up-to-date on current events. He is saddened by the barbarism that is the norm. He discovers that someone has stuck pitchfork into his cousin for unknown reasons. He finds Zamira in a barn and tries to save her from being killed by his cousin’s cousin. The cousin demands that she be turned over to him for the crime, but Aleksandar insist that justice should provide a fair trial. He assaults his cousin and leaves the barn with Zamira, but while walking away he is shot down. And she runs way. ( How did he get the photographs of her and Kiril Dead?)
Before the Rain
By DEBORAH YOUNG

Variety,1994

"Rain," the first feature directed by Macedonian-born helmer Milcho Manchevski (now a New York resident and director of music vids), is also the first film made in the newly declared republic of Macedonia. Bordering Greece (which hotly disputes its very name), Albania, Bulgaria and Serbia, the mountainous country is shown in danger of becoming the next Balkan bloodbath. But unlike many observers who blame the war in former Yugoslavia on political pressures, Manchevski depicts senseless ethnic hatred as endemic to the region.
Film is divided into three parts. In "Words," the young Greek orthodox monk Kiril (Gregoire Colin), living in an ancient monastery, shelters and hides an Albanian girl, Zamira (Labina Mitevska), even though they can't understand each other's language. A band of machine-gun-wielding roughnecks bursts into the monastery looking for her, claiming she killed their brother. Kiril and Zamira escape together, but are intercepted by the girl's Muslim relatives. They shoot her down in cold blood, rather than let her go off with a Christian. After the aching beauty of the Macedonian landscape with its monasteries, churches and people who appear lifted from another century, the modernity of the second episode, "Faces," comes as a shock. Anne (Katrin Cartlidge), who works in a London photo agency, is torn between her Macedonian lover Aleksandar (Rade Serbedzija), a Pulitzer prize-winning war photographer, and her sweet, boring husband Nick (Jay Villiers.) Before she can make up her mind between them, Aleksandar takes off for Macedonia andNick dies in an absurd shoot-out in a restaurant.
"Pictures" takes the story back to Macedonia and brings the threads together. Aleksandar returns to his native village, where he's determined to spend the rest of his life forgetting the horrors of taking photographs on the front line.
But the rumblings of war have already infected the once-peaceful Christian villagers: they treat their Albanian neighbors, who are Muslims, as enemies now. Trigger-happy boys with automatic weapons bar his way when he goes to see his boyhood love, Hana (Silvija Stojanovska). Pic owes part of its disturbing magic to its challenging structure. All the events seem to take place at the same time, until the surprising and clever ending. Without beating around the bush, "Rain" accuses the people themselves of starting a fratricidal war, rather than politicians or mistakes made by the U.N. The Macedonian part has an urgency that spills over into the London sequence, where a normal restaurant becomes the site of a massacre. It suggests that no war is limited by man-made boundaries, and no place is so far away that it is safe from danger and violence. There is a piercing sadness in the fanaticism of hating one's neighbor which "Rain" captures very clearly. The monks who have sheltered Bosnian refugees tell the blood-thirsty avengers to turn the other cheek. "We already have," they reply. "An eye for an eye.""Might is right.""He's not one of us -- I'll cut his throat.""It's time to revenge five centuries of our blood." Actors have a strong iconic presence, in which faces are as important as speeches. Dialogue is kept to a realistic minimum. A passionate soundtrack by Anastasia provides a powerful driving force in the film. Manuel Teran's breathtaking cinematography imparts a tragic natural beauty to the landscape which, the film implies, may soon be torn apart by war is shot down.