In depth · Balkan cinema
Skopje on film: the Manaki brothers, Before the Rain and Honeyland
Our long read on Balkan cinema tells the story of the whole region; this page gathers the films, the stars and the places that belong to Skopje, with official trailers wherever they exist.
Updated October 2026
The Manaki brothers and Skoplje ’63
The first films made in the region were shot in 1905 by the brothers Milton and Yanaki Manaki, photographers from Bitola, and the cinematographers’ festival in Bitola still carries their name. Veljko Bulajić’s documentary Skoplje ’63, about the city’s earthquake and its rebuilding, won a prize at the Monte Carlo Television Festival.
Before the Rain: a Golden Lion
Milcho Manchevski’s Before the Rain (1994), three interlocking stories shot around Lake Ohrid and in London, won the Golden Lion in Venice and the first Oscar nomination for a film from North Macedonia.
Honeyland: the beekeeper and the Oscars
Tamara Kotevska and Ljubomir Stefanov spent three years filming Hatidže, a keeper of wild bees in an abandoned village in the hills of North Macedonia. Honeyland (2019) won the Grand Jury Prize for documentary at Sundance and became the first film ever nominated for the Oscars for both best documentary and best international feature.
Cinematheque of North Macedonia Cinema in Skopje: the back story Balkan Cinema: our long read on the ULTIMATE Regions guide
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Sources: the Festival de Cannes (festival-cannes.com), the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences (oscars.org), the Berlinale and the Venice Biennale archives, the Croatian Audiovisual Centre (havc.hr), the AFI Catalog, the International Film Festival Rotterdam, MoMA, Sixth Tone, SBS and the festival press, checked on 25 October 2026. Trailers are embedded from the official YouTube channels of each film’s producer, distributor or national film centre; where none exists online, we leave it out. Stories about stars and the region are many, and we print only those we can check.