Product Description

The first film made in the newly independent Republic of Macedonia, Milcho Manchevski’s Before the Rain crosscuts the stories of an orthodox Christian monk (Grégoire Colin), a British photo agent (Katrin Cartlidge), and a native Macedonian war photographer (Rade Šerbedžija) to paint a portrait of simmering, entrenched ethnic and religious hatred about to reach its boiling point. Made during the strife of the war-torn Balkan states in the nineties, this gripping triptych of love and violence is also a timeless evocation of the loss of pastoral innocence, and remains one of recent cinema’s most poetic evocations of the futility of war.

DIRECTOR-APPROVED SPECIAL EDITION FEATURES:

• New, restored high-definition digital transfer, supervised and approved by director Milcho Manchevski • Audio commentary featuring Manchevski and film scholar Annette Insdorf • New video interview with actor Rade Šerbedžija • Manchevski's award-winning music video for Arrested Development's "Tennessee" • Stills galleries of Manchevski's photographs and on-set shots • Theatrical trailer • New and improved English subtitle translation • PLUS: A new essay by film scholar Ian Christie • More!

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #13676 in DVD
• Brand: Image Entertainment
• Released on: 2008-06-24
• Rating: Unrated
• Aspect ratio: 1.78:1
• Formats: Color, DVD, Subtitled, Widescreen, NTSC
• Original language: English
• Subtitled in: English
• Number of discs: 1
• Dimensions: 1.00 pounds
• Running time: 103 minutes

From The New Yorker
A strange, confusing, and confident picture from the Macedonian director Milcho Manchevski. He has the sensibility of someone who has seen quite enough to rid him of political illusion; watching the film, you'd never guess that he's only thirty-five. The first and third parts are set in Macedonia, where a young monk (Gregoire Colin) harbors a refugee (Labina Mitevska) from the local Albanian minority. His uncle, the chunky and fearless Aleksandar (Rade Serbedzija), has come home to get some peace. Not a chance: this is a place where villages are torn in two. The middle section, a scrap of a love affair set in London, is less successful, although even here the editing is so beautifully paced that Manchevski makes you sense fault lines running all over the world. He sees through hope and bigotry alike, and even when his complex rotary narrative makes no logical sense it never stops making emotional sense. In Macedonian. -Anthony Lane
Copyright © 2006 The New Yorker

Customer Reviews

One of the Greatest Films of Our Time
I never grow tired of watching BEFORE THE RAIN. It is, first, a stunningly beautiful piece of cinematography. The camera pans natural vistas, churches, London streets, and the faces of the interlocking characters with sensitivity, wisdom, and love. The three parts of the film mesh with perfect paradox, underscoring the recurring theme that time is not a circle. We see the young, the old, the weak, the strong, the living, and the dead all intermingling with an incoherent rap song which blasts from speakers the world over. The pacing is ideal; the plot is ingenious; the message is eternal. BEFORE THE RAIN should be reissued on videocassette and offered on DVD. It moves me as much as any film I've ever seen. Even American high-school students are captivated by it, and that in itself in a small miracle!

Great film about a great tragedy
In watching this movie you can understand the Balkan conflict better than if you readfive books on the subject. It is about the power of war crushing the innocence of love. good acting all around and wonderful cinematography. We need a DVD relase of this one! those reading this review please tell amazon you want a DVD version, as more and more people switch exclusively to DVD it would be a shame of if this gem were forgotten.

Captures the Haunting Spirit of Place and Time
Dark, dramatic, mysterious, intriguing laments in musical form that perfectly fit with the film of the same name. The music is at once gripping, captivating, alluring, and even dangerous. It intoxicates and transports you to the place and time of the music. Indeed, it is an experience to listen to it. This is the mark of a great soundtrack, I think. One which can be taken outside the context of the film for which it was made and played again and again, still evoking the images of the film (or evoking other, perhaps more powerful feelings).

I loved this film (also highly recommend it), but the soundtrack is exquisite and stands alone as a musical achievement.