Milcho Manchevski Returns to Tokyo With 'Sister Brother Manhole Cover'

By Daniel Okafor

Milcho Manchevski, whose 1994 debut "Before the Rain" won Venice's Golden Lion and an Oscar nomination, is back in competition at the Tokyo International Film Festival with "Sister Brother Manhole Cover" — a film that spent years blocked after he accused North Macedonia's film agency of corruption.

The dark comedy follows Malina and Viktor, a sister and brother surviving on the margins of post-Communist Macedonia by stealing bronze busts of national heroes and manhole covers, selling the metal for scrap. When a job goes wrong and Viktor is seriously hurt, Malina strikes a deal with a crooked doctor. The siblings go on the run and find refuge with the doctor's wealthy blind mother, Todora.

"I wanted to tell a story about a kind of love that is rarely at the center of films, yet it is so beautiful: the love between a brother and a sister," Manchevski told Variety. "It can be fierce, complicated, sometimes painful, but also unconditional like no other type of love."

He drew on traditional Macedonian songs about sisterly love, which he calls poignant and at times shocking. His siblings are thieves, not saints. "They are far from ideal people. But they are deserving of understanding and affection," he said. "Idealized characters make for bad movies."

Why the manhole covers?

The busts carry the symbolism. For Manchevski, they stand for the values a society claims to honor while abandoning people like Malina and Viktor. "They would rather eat than venerate the past and the ideals," he said. The manhole covers are plainer — everyday infrastructure that becomes a hazard the moment it vanishes. Yet they also "keep a lid on the ugliness of society, on its septic underground" until someone pries them loose.

He refuses to romanticize his protagonists' poverty. "Poverty is not picturesque. It is painful and dehumanizing," he said. "The circumstances that shape these lives are real, and they are political." Their refusal to see themselves as victims is, in his reading, a way of reclaiming their own story.

The film unfolds in two movements: the first trails the siblings through a rough, unpredictable world; the second tightens on their inner lives. Genre, he argues, is beside the point. "Sticking to genre rules is a bit like painting by numbers," he said. "Life does not keep these things separate, so I don't see why a film should."

What happened with the film agency?

The project was financed, then stalled. "After I reported corruption at the Film Agency that goes all the way up to the Prime Minister, I faced political harassment, a media smear campaign and criminal proceedings," Manchevski said.

He reported the alleged corruption in 2020 and 2022; the film was first approved in 2023. He says he won two court cases against the agency, and that the State Commission for Prevention of Corruption and the State Audit Office confirmed his account. The Venice Film Festival, Whistleblowing International and Transparency International offered support.

"When a filmmaker can be prevented from working for political reasons, that points to a dysfunctional society," he said.

Once the blockade lifted, he shot the feature alongside "Good People," a documentary about those affected by the Kočani nightclub fire.

A local story with global ambitions

Manchevski grew up under Communism and remains wary of morally self-congratulatory cinema. "Art should not talk down to its audience. It should open up a world, not close the discussion," he said. He also mourns "the death of beauty in cinema today," blaming an ecosystem in which "many festivals and (European) film funds have abdicated their role in promoting and boosting brave films."

The problems aren't uniquely Macedonian, he insists: "We are all the third world today. In that sense, wealth inequality is the new global warming."

This is his fourth Tokyo appearance; "Kaymak" competed there in 2022. His credits also include "Dust," which opened Venice in 2001, plus "Shadows," "Mothers," "Willow" and an episode of HBO's "The Wire."

The cast features Sara Klimoska, Filip Trajkovikj, Sonja Mihajlova, Dejan Lilich and Petar Mirchevski. Stefano Falivene shot it; David Munns designed it. Jane Kortoshev produced for Banana Film, with co-producers from Bulgaria, Serbia, Albania, the U.K. and Italy. Coccinelle Film handles world sales.

Next comes "Homecoming," a story of regret and forgiveness that he says he finally "cracked open by reducing it to its emotional and narrative essence." A filmmaker blocked for years now has two films and a third on the way. The manhole cover, one might say, has been pried loose.