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Milcho Manchevski: We Let the Truth and the People Speak for Themselves
What is it like when good people burn in hell? The protagonists of the documentary film GOOD PEOPLE by Milcho Manchevski offer an answer. The film will be screened in Competition Programme – Documentary Film of 32nd Sarajevo Film Festival.
On a March night in 2025, a fire broke out in the illegal club Puls in Kočani. This small town in North Macedonia suffered a tragedy that took 63 lives. The Macedonian director Milcho Manchevski, greatly out of favor due to the exposure of corruption in the Macedonian Film Agency, secretly recorded a documentary film in which witnesses talk about their personal experiences. Whether they were part of the audience, survivors of the stampede who endured smoke inhalation and sustained multiple burns, or accidental rescuers who, driven by the urge to find friends or family members, or simply to come to the aid of those who happened to be in the club, these people speak to a completely restrained, objective camera as if they were confiding in a therapist. In the process of entrustment, mere facts grow into intimate confessions and, exceeding documentarism in its general form, intertwine with philosophy, ethics, psychology and humanism that far transcend local frameworks and begin to deal with universal questions of good and evil, life and death and the human relationship to these issues.
The whole region heard about the tragedy in the Puls club, many tried to help as best they knew how, journalists made dramatic TV reports that flooded the news, but you had the urge to record the most intimate confessions of the victims and saviors. Was that your first reaction, spontaneous, human, or did you have time to think about what to do before leaving for Kočani?
My first thought was with the victims, survivors and heroes. They went through an immense tragedy that none of us can fully fathom. Their everyday lives, filled with joy and love for their community, were turned into a living hell in an instant. The tagline of the film is „When good people burn in hell.“ I wanted to give them a voice, and we started working and filming the good people only a month after the tragedy. That is the least we could offer as a sign of immense respect and solidarity. This film is theirs. We were there only to offer support, to channel their words, thoughts, experiences and emotions. I didn't want to manipulate anything. Our job as filmmakers – with the editor Mishko Chunihin and the cinematographer Ivan Ivanovski – was to offer a medium through which their words and their expressions would be recorded for the world and for future generations. As filmmakers, we are trained to manipulate the cinematic material, but I decided that we should take a back seat to the words of the good people. We applied a spartan, ascetic, minimalist technique, something that would keep the viewer as close as possible to the lived experience. We offered a platform, carefully arranged the testimonials in chronological order leading to an emotional crescendo, and let the truth and the people speak for themselves. This film is like a book.
The way you listened and what you heard was impressive. How did you manage to keep your distance, not to interfere, not to ask questions, not to demand responsibility, not to console the interlocutors?
To tell you the truth, it wasn't easy to stay outside. At one point, I offered some words, I told the bereaved parents of my experience when I was confronted with a tragedy as a child. We kept it in the first cut of the film, even though it was breaking the fourth wall. But then, I reverted to the initial idea of the film, which was to keep it minimal and ascetic.
The basic technique you used was the interview. There is no additional narration and between the conversations there are several authentic recordings of the pyrotechnics that caused the fire, I assume from the cell phones of your conversers. The words or sentences of your interlocutors appear briefly on the screen, not so much as a summary of what was just said, but more like an echo of it. Without a hint of sensationalism and the desire to shock, you have achieved an atmosphere that leaves the horrified viewer petrified and speechless. How much did you imagine such an atmosphere in advance, and how much did it build itself?
The truth is bigger and stronger than anything we could mimic with cinematic techniques. Our job was to be restrained. We had some terrifying footage of dead people lined up like rag dolls, material which would illustrate the words, but we felt that the words and the faces are more than enough, that they are stronger and more faithful to the truth than any B-roll illustration. Sometimes restraint is the loudest action.
The visual counterbalance to the interview room dominated by black drapery, in front of which the painful, desperate and sad faces of your interlocutors alternate, is represented by Kočani rice fields, the white gold of Kočani. The beauty and peace of the landscape have a healing effect and give the viewer a chance to rest. I cannot escape the impression that the daily view of such beauty must affect the kindness of the people who live next to it. Of course, there are always the less good ones, for whom money makes the world go round, but you left them to someone else’s film. Did you want to send a message that we should more appreciate the beauty around us and those good, noble people who are ready to risk their lives to save others?
Yes, it is important to talk about what led to this tragedy, about greed and social dysfunction, but it belongs to a different film. And yes, one of the messages of this film is to be kinder to each other, to see the good in the people we are living with. I was genuinely stunned by the articulate, precise and selfless way our interlocutors expressed themselves in the face of their pain. I was even more impressed by their honesty and heroism. After the interviews, some of them expressed their gratitude that we came to hear their story, to record it for posterity, to give them a chance to get a little off their chest. Some told us that we were the first ones to hear their experiences. We also owe a debt of gratitude to „Support Kochani“ for helping the community and for assisting us in the making of this film.
More than three decades ago, you personally brought a copy of your feature debut Before the Rain from the USA to the first Sarajevo Film Festival. You were the president of the jury for the Competition Program - Short Film of the seventeenth SFF and here you are finally back here as an author and competitor. How much have you changed in the meantime and how much are you still the same enthusiast who is ready to fly from New York to the Balkans for what he believes in and, in a UN transporter, travel to a city where the war has not yet ended?
That journey to Sarajevo in 1995 was something I will never forget. That is when I realized that – since pure evil exists, genuine good must also exist in the world. The only place in former Yugoslavia that I visited with Before the Rain was Sarajevo. It took us 14 hours in an armored car to reach Sarajevo from Split, checkpoints and all. After that, I helped put together the board of honorary directors of the festival, which included some of the all-time cinematic legends, like Scorsese and Oshima. Yes, I still firmly believe in the importance of doing the right thing, of fighting for it no matter the price, and I still believe in the importance of art in our lives.