Macedonian director wins funding fight

Milcho Manchevski’s eighth feature, Sister Brother Manhole Cover, received its world premiere at the Tokyo International Film Festival on Oct. 30. The film, a dark comedy about fraternal love and the wealth gap, is the first of two projects to debut within two months of each other. It follows Kaymak, which played in competition at the same festival four years ago.

Manchevski said the film was initially financed four years ago but was frozen when he reported corruption at the Macedonian film agency in 2020 and 2022. He said the complaints reached the prime minister, leading to his blacklisting. His projects were halted, and a smear campaign appeared in government press. He noted that the Anti-Corruption Commission and the State Audit Office confirmed his reports, yet the agency filed criminal charges against him.

The director said he sued the film agency rather than defending against its cases. He won two court cases, which forced the release of funds for the new film. The investigation triggered by his corruption reports is still ongoing. He cited 39 projects that received partial or full funding but were never made, noting that the money was split among stakeholders.

Manchevski also completed Good People, a documentary about the Macedonian nightclub fire in Kočani, which he filmed one month after the tragedy. He self-financed the documentary because he could not access agency funds and wanted to avoid politicizing the subject. The film premiered in Sarajevo, had a theatrical run in Macedonia, and is scheduled to play in Torino next month.

Manchevski said he grew up in Yugoslavia, where he witnessed the Black Wave in the early 1970s. Filmmakers like Dušan Makavejev and Aleksandar Petrović were banned overnight after winning international awards. He said this early exposure to censorship made him sensitive to control in any form, whether from Hollywood, record labels, or government bodies.

He described his approach to filmmaking as intuitive and disciplined, often relying on archetypes and rewriting to surface themes. He said he prefers to judge films by their execution rather than the filmmaker’s background or political context. He criticized the trend of neo-social realism in the industry, calling it a restrictive style that limits artistic expression.

Manchevski said his next project, Homecoming, is a story with a happy ending about a man who returns home to die and learns to forgive himself. He said he has kept this idea for a long time but only recently began developing it. He plans to work on it with the same intensity he applied to his last two films, which he said offset each other during the editing process.