Milcho Manchevski

Milcho Manchevski's acclaimed Before the Rain is considered "one of the greatest debut feature films in the history of cinema" (Annette Insdorf) and "one of the most important films of the decade" (Ann Kibbey). The New York Times included it on its list "Best 1,000 Movies Ever Made". It won the Golden Lion in Venice, Independent Spirit, an Academy Award nomination and 30 other awards. "Manchevski continues down his distinctive artistic path" (Hollywood Reporter) with the award-winning features Dust (which opened Venice 2001), Shadows, Mothers, Bikini Moon, Willow, the short forms The End of Time, Thursday, Macedonia Timeless, 1.73, Arrested Development's Tennessee and an episode of HBO's The Wire. "His work stands out in world cinema for its unique way of playing with space, time and emotion" (Keith Brown). Roger Ebert said, "Work like this keeps me going. A reminder of the nobility that film can attain." "His unique blend of experimentation, poetry, emotion, and a demand for the active participation of the viewer in the construction of meaning are highly praised." (Conor McGrady). His work is part of the curricula at numerous universities and is the subject of many essays and books. Milcho Manchevski wrote and directed the feature films Willow (2019), Bikini Moon (2017), Mothers (2010), Shadows (2007), Dust (2001), Before the Rain (1994) and over 50 short forms, including The End of Time (2017), Thursday (2013), 1.73 (1984) and the music video Tennessee (1991) for Arrested Development. He has also been a director on HBO's The Wire (2002). He had three solo exhibitions of photographs, published works of fiction, books of photographs and staged performance art. Before the Rain won an Academy-Award nomination and thirty awards, including Golden Lion for Best Film in Venice, Independent Spirit, FIPRESCI, UNESCO, best film of the year in Argentina, Italy, Sweden, Turkey, and other awards in Austria, Belgium, Brazil, Poland, Puerto Rico, Russia, etc. The New York Times included Before the Rain on its list of the best 1,000 films ever made. All of Manchevski's films were widely screened at international film festivals. Dust was the opening film of the Venice Film Festival. Willow, Shadows and Mothers were the Macedonian Academy Awards entries. Willow and Mothers were selected among the 40 European films of the year by the European Film Academy committee. Willow opened at the Rome Film Festival and subsequently won five festival awards. Mothers screened in the Panorama section of Berlinale, later winning seven festival awards. Manchevski also won awards for his shorts Thursday (2013) and The End of Time (2017), best experimental film (for 1.73), best MTV video (for Tennessee, which The Rolling Stone placed on the list of the 100 best videos ever), and best commercial (for Macedonia Timeless (2009)). His films are part of the curricula at numerous universities worldwide, and have been discoursed at a number of conferences. The University of Leipzig (Germany) and the European University Institute in Florence (Italy) hosted academic conferences dedicated, respectively, to Before the Rain and Dust. He has published fiction, essays and op-ed pieces in Journal of Screenwriting, New American Writing, La Repubblica, Corriere Della Sera, Sineast, The Guardian, Suddeutsche Zeitung, Pravda, etc. Manchevski has staged performance art with the group 1AM (which he founded) and by himself. He has published a (very small) book of fiction, The Ghost of My Mother (1985), a short book on art theory Truth and Fiction: Notes on (Exceptional) Faith in Art (2012), a book of photographs and essays Pictures, Words and Lies (2015) and three books of photographs, Street (1999), Five Drops of Dream (2010) and There (2020) which accompany the three solo photo exhibitions. He taught and served as Head of Directing Studies at NYU's Tisch School of the Arts' Graduate Film program. He has also taught and lectured at a number of universities, cinematheques, art museums and art institutes: Feirstein Graduate School of Cinema at Brooklyn College, EICTV (Cuba), VGIK (Russia), London Film School, Oxford Brookes, Cambridge, University of Chicago, University of Texas (Austin), Brown University, FDU (Belgrade), Shanghai Normal University, Hanoi Cinematheque, University of Tsukuba (Japan), University Babelsberg Konrad Wolf (the German state film school), Universität Bielefeld, Universidade Federal do Rio Grande do Sul (Brazil), etc. Manchevski's work has screened at more than four hundred festivals, and has been distributed in more than 60 countries (theatrically, TV, cable, streaming and video). He holds an honorary doctorate from VGIK in Moscow, Russia. He is a member of the Directors Guild of America, European Film Academy and the PEN Club. He has served on festival juries in Venice, Shanghai, Warsaw, Locarno, Teheran, Vilnius, Pula, Montenegro, FEST (Belgrade), Munich, Rostov-on-Don, Hainan, etc.