Italian Max Magazine
April 2002
Translation by Luciana Piazza

Brothers, knives and rebels from the West to Macedonia. What a "macedonia" [Italian for "fruit salad"]...

Cowboy brothers get knives for the love of a prostitute with a strange appeal. The elder leaves the West (after seeing the news on cinema!) and decides to go to the East, to Macedonia, at the beginning of last century - torn among rebels who kill themselves under the Turkish repression. He uses his pistols in service of everyone, until his little brother's arrival. The latter follows him with guns and biblical quotations. Everything is told in flashback, in today's New York, by an old lady who keeps a treasure, to a thief that is running from killers who break two of his fingers everyday... After Before the Rain, Manchevski turns to endless tribal duels in the Balkans.

There is something wild and original about his New York, but when he plays at home, he doesn't resist the temptation of turning Macedonia into a "fruit salad" of the Italian western, Slavic films, a bit of Hugo Pratt (he is, en passant, an unpleasant Maltese Falcon...), ethnical splatter and mocking metaphysics, with a final comical rhythm. From the altars in orthodox convents to dust.