Culture 3 min read By Mason Emerson
Milcho Manchevski returns to Tokyo competition with stalled corruption-era project
Before the Rain director Milcho Manchevski is in competition at the Tokyo International Film Festival with Sister Brother Manhole Cover, a dark comedy whose production stalled after he accused North Macedonia's film agency of corruption.
Milcho Manchevski, the North Macedonian director whose 1994 debut Before the Rain won the Golden Lion at Venice and earned an Oscar nomination, is back in competition at the Tokyo International Film Festival with Sister Brother Manhole Cover. The project had been stalled for years after Manchevski publicly accused his country's film agency of corruption.
The dark comedy centers on a family whose bond is tested by a single act of wrongdoing, a theme that runs close to the director's own clash with the institutions that were meant to back his work. Manchevski has long been an outspoken critic of how public film funding is handled in North Macedonia, and his decision to speak out came at a cost to the film's momentum.
The Tokyo selection places the film before an international audience at a moment when Manchevski has been reflecting on the state of filmmaking more broadly. In his interview with Variety, he takes up the question of whistleblowing, the pressures facing artists who challenge the systems that fund them, and what he describes as a 'death of beauty' in contemporary cinema. Those comments frame the film as both a personal statement and a broader argument about the values that drive the medium.
Tokyo's competition slate also highlights the festival's wider interest in directors working outside the major studio system. Another filmmaker, Romanian-Belgian director Teodora Ana Mihai, is presenting her feature Heysel 85 at the same festival, where it received its Asian premiere. Mihai's film had a buzzy debut at the Berlin International Film Festival almost eight months earlier, and she is now launching it internationally.
Mihai, who directed the film from a screenplay she co-wrote, is using the Tokyo stop to build awareness for the feature as it moves beyond its European debut. Her presence alongside Manchevski underlines how the festival is positioning itself as a meeting point for independent voices from Central and Eastern Europe and beyond.
For Manchevski, the return to competition is a notable step after years of difficulty. Before the Rain remains his most widely seen work, and its success in the early 1990s established him as one of the most closely watched directors to emerge from the region. Sister Brother Manhole Cover now tests whether that reputation can carry a more pointed, politically charged project through to completion and audiences.
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