Before The Rain

Billed as the first feature made in Macedonia, formerly a region of Yugoslavia, BEFORE THE RAIN is a glossy, mystical, ultimately pessimistic take on the worldwide ripples caused by Balkan genocide. In its three-part narrative, a young monk shelters a Muslim girl; a trendy Londoner (Katrin Cartlidge, NAKED) struggles with some unanticipated personal consequences of war; a Macedonian photographer (Rade Serbedzija) returns to the village of his childhood and finds it changed beyond recognition. A grim, portentous, relatively accessible film, written and directed by Macedonian expatriate Milcho Manchevski.