♪ I loved Macedonia.

It's beautiful, unique and small enough to travel around at leisure.

The capital city, Skopje, is rich in arts and culture, funky architecture and an energetic, friendly people.

An escape to the mountains, and nature is always at your fingertips.

And wandering through some villages can feel like a step back in time.

The cinema is thoughtful and reflective, and the language is like music to my ears.

♪ Hi.

I'm Stephanie.

The Cinema Nomad.

Join me on brand new adventures.

The world is a wonderful place where people overcome incredible odds to make their mark.

We'll meet filmmakers who are as courageous as they are inspiring.

Cinema Nomad connects across cultures to learn, explore, share and carry on a heritage of cinematic storytelling.

♪ [in Macedonian] Ana Jakimska is a writer and director from Skopje, Macedonia, in what was then Yugoslavia.

She was born in Gevgelija, and spent some time there as a child before moving back to Skopje, at 12 years old.

I liked Ana instantly.

We have lots in common from our mutual love of academia and literature and of course, cinema.

Ana is drawn to stories that try to make sense of the world and herself in it, and she writes about "epiphanies she has during her everyday life and personal relationships.

She's influenced by American short stories the likes of Raymond Carver, the movies of Bergman, Ozu, Yang, Iñárritu, and the music of Leonard Cohen.

And she loves the Japanese animated film "My Neighbor Totoro."

Ana is an award winning filmmaker who studied film directing at the Faculty of Dramatic Arts in Skopje, where she conducted research on the use of color in film.

She has since gone on to receive a Master's Degree in directing fiction from Goldsmiths University of London.

She has a BA in both Comparative Literature and Film and Television directing.

Ana was awarded the prestigious Chevening Scholarship, awarded by the UK government to future leaders globally.

She is an alumni of Talent Sarajevo, Midpoint Script Development Program and First Films First Young Directors Academy.

She is the co-founder and co-owner of Suteren, a media production company based in Skopje.

I first enrolled at the Faculty of Dramatic Arts, doing writing for film actually like screenwriting and then being there, I saw what it meant to be a film director and what it was like to study film and actually to work with the text and with the actors.

So take it from this level of having a not fully finished product like the screen, the script is into having something that's finalized and ready to be shown to people.

So I decided that this if I was to go into the direction of doing something related to film writing wasn't enough for me, because it wasn't the whole process.

It was just one phase of it.

It was like, it's only as far as you can go with the writing.

But then there's this huge world of working, visualizing and contextualizing the script, like knowing why you're doing it, who you're going to do it with, and in what way.

So like one script can appear so different, being directed and acted by different people.

Though officially named the Republic of North Macedonia.

Many locals I met prefer to stick to Macedonia.

And who would have thought, a naming system could be so controversial?

When Ana was born, Macedonia was part of the Socialist Federal Republic of Yugoslavia, a country that also went through multiple name changes over the decades and centuries.

So even the question of "Where are you from?"

is a complicated one for her and her compatriots.

If you asked in the years between 1993 to 2019, the formal answer would have been The Former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia or FYROM for short.

This is a mouthful.

The new name came as a compromise, after 25 years of negotiations that sometimes teetered on political instability between the Republic of Macedonia and Greece, who has geographical and historical ties to the Hellenistic region of Macedonia within Greece's modern day borders.

The descriptive north is meant to clearly distinguish between the two.

A pain in the butt when it comes to updating forms of identification.

What's it like to grow up in a country that doesn't exist today?

Oh yeah.

I didn't grow up in Yugoslavia.

I was only born, and at that time I was born in 1988.

At the time, it was already starting to fall apart.

Somehow the control wasn't as strong.

But still, this country, Macedonia, has been changing drastically.

Maybe even during the years of my growing up.

So I was born in this falling apart Yugoslavia, completely on the sunset of the existing of the country's existence and ... Yeah, and then it was at the beginning.

Like the beginning of Macedonian independent history.

It was some people wanted to merge back with Yugoslavia again.

Some were growing this national identity feeling and national pride.

So it was a bit mixed up.

Nothing was too rigid.

Everything was quite mellow, balanced.

Because Macedonia was the only state from Ex-Yugoslavia, that didn't didn't announce it's independence through war and then didn't go through this military conflict.

But it was just like a deal that they made with the then Yugoslav government that we were separating.

And the question that was, there was a referendum about the... if the population wants to be independent, like if we should announce our independence.

And the question was formulated in a way which was kind of, not completely clear because the question was, are you for Macedonian independence with the possibility of rejoining Yugoslavia or other such federations and pacts?

And then, of course, I mean, there's always a possibility.

So it was a bit of a dodgy question, and I think that a lot of people who were, maybe Yugo-felix?

How do you call them who loved Yugoslavia?

Yeah.

Maybe they were fooled into voting "yes."

And I don't know.

I mean.

- Yeah it's interesting because the percentage of people who voted yes is overwhelming high.

-Yeah, It was huge.

And then, at the first Assembly meeting that they had, like the official Macedonian Assembly get together.

They were discussing if they should also intonate the Yugoslavian hymn in the, in the assembly, or if it should be just the Macedonian and most of the members of Parliment, they wanted also the Yugoslavian.

And it was this only VRMO, which is the right wing party.

They were the only ones who were like, no, why?

I mean, what was the point of separating if we were still going to pay our respects to the Federation?

I mean, this now sounds like Star Wars, but, yeah, and yeah.

And they insisted, no, it's going to be only the National hymn.

North Macedonia, with a population of around 2 million, is bordered by Greece, Albania, Kosovo, Serbia and Bulgaria.

It gained its independence in 1991 with the majority vote, in a rare exception of a former Yugoslavia republic succeeding peacefully.

Historically, Macedonia has a central location as a communication transport point along the Danube River route north to south and east to west, trade routes connecting the Adriatic with the Black Sea and Istanbul.

Religiously, Macedonia is historically Christian in the Eastern Orthodox tradition, even having created their own Macedonian branch, though after 500 years under the Ottoman Empire a significant Muslim population survives as well.

In the sixth century, a Slavic population migrated who converted to Christianity.

In modern times, there's a growing Muslim minority living within the borders, as evidenced by brand new mosques being built up across the country.

In 2002, the 216ft high Millennium Cross was erected on Vodno Mountain overlooking Skopje in honor of the 2000 year anniversary of Christ's crucifixion.

It's considered one of the tallest crosses in the world.

Some saw this as a political maneuver to boost Christian Macedonian nationalism.

Either way, it's a nice hike with a lovely view over the capital city.

The country itself has gotten tossed around a lot over the centuries between the Byzantines, Bulgarians, Serbians and Ottoman Empire.

I'm interested to see how Macedonia has picked up the scattered pieces to put their country back together.

How do today's filmmakers create a cinematic identity from all these fractured pieces?

And I know you were quite young, but do you have any recollections from Yugoslavia?

Not from Yugoslavia, but I have, unfortunately, some recollections from the war in Sarajevo.

It's one of the first things I remember I watched on TV.

They would watch the news and be very worried about what was going on in Bosnia.

And they just couldn't believe how Yugoslavia had come to this because, it was founded on this sisterly brotherly principles that we are the same people and the nations, religion, they don't matter at all.

And in the background.

And then you have everything turn around really fast.

And just people who knew each other started being on opposite sides of this world conflict and, even genocide.

And then, yeah, I remember watching this on TV and, there was a scene of a little boy who was begging not to be shot.

I remember this, I saw it, yeah.

And, I mean, he was maybe a bit older than me at the at the time, but it was really striking.

I felt like I was watching a film, and just because I saw how my parents were disturbed by this, I realized that it's not a film, it's actually reality because they they wouldn't be watching if they wouldn't be watching it like that with that intensity and interest, if it had been fiction.

"Call Me Barbara" is a ten minute film from Ana's first year at film school.

It shows a budding talent as a filmmaker with a sensitive eye and an ability to get close to her subjects.

This is a profile documentary with a compelling main character, a transgender individual, Filip, who prefers the name Barbara.

It has a personal feel to it, and you feel like you really get to know her.

We see her at home, cooking, her solitude.

We see her in the music studio, the mean stuff people say to her online or on the streets.

The difficulties of being transgender in Macedonia.

At the end, we see her perform at a cabaret in her element.

Then life returns to "normal."

With the wig off, we feel a sense of melancholy as she walks home.

[in Macedonian] Yeah, I'm drawn to the topic because I feel that it gets put aside a lot, especially in a country which is still on the list of developing countries, like "third world" countries, where poverty is always a big issue, and political tensions, ethnic tensions.

There are so many questions which are here to stay, like the usual suspects.

And then the LGBT questions is always considered a luxury.

It's like, okay, people don't have bread to eat and you want to what, to be decadent And it's not accepted as generally not accepted as something that's actually a very important part of somebody's life.

And then there's so little education on the subject.

Like people would mix up sexual orientation with gender identity.

Like, I don't know if somebody was I don't know if somebody was like a trans man and wanted to go out with women, then they would be like, okay, so that's lesbian.

Like they always make these connections because there's so little education and so little information available, not only within the formal education system, which is completely lacking of any sexual education, but also informally in the media or everywhere.

Walking around Skopje is like visiting an open air museum.

There are so many sculptures and statues, and many of the buildings in the city center are newly renovated to look like Neoclassical or Hellenistic style architecture.

While this makes it interesting for a visitor to explore the large quantity of statues and newer building projects are somewhat controversial and not everyone is in favor of it.

To some, the move to overemphasize the Hellenistic qualities of Macedonia speaks to a certain level of nationalism, as it is seen as a political power play.

Still, the buildings, statues, sculptures, and bridges are fun to look at.

There's even a giant Arc de Triomphe gate to enter Macedonia Square at the heart of the city center, Where "Warrior On A Horse" is seen.

It's an 88ft high statue of Alexander the Great, the son of Philip II of Macedon, who ruled over this region from 359 to 336 BCE.

Across the nearby historic stone bridge, which goes over the Vardar River, you'll find statues of Macedonian artists and musicians, the Museum of Archeology and the National Theatre.

Skopje is Macedonia's capital and home to one third of the country's population.

The region has been inhabited since 4000 BCE, and its diverse architecture is a testament to this millennia long heritage.

From the Ottoman era Mustafa Pasha mosque to the neoclassical columns and over 200 statues, as a result of the city's newer 2014 revamp.

The Old Bazaar is a nice market to stroll around and was once the city's commercial hub during Ottoman rule.

I was interested to learn that Mother Teresa was originally from Macedonia.

Mother Teresa, an ethnically Albanian Catholic saint with close ties to Calcutta, India, was born and raised in Skopje, and I visited the Mother Teresa Memorial House to learn more about her life and good works.

Time never dies.

The circle is not round.

This quote is spoken by the character of Father Marko in the 1994 movie "Before The Rain", directed by Milcho Manchevski.

"Before The Rain" is a monumental film in Macedonian cinema, as it was the first movie to be nominated for an Academy Award Best Foreign Language Film.

"Before The Rain" is a story in three parts, told in a non-linear manner.

It plays with time and messes with the mind.

Part One is set in rural Macedonia at a monastery and its surrounding villages.

A young adult monk who's taken a vow of silence harbors a teenage Albanian girl, a fugitive whose family is trying to murder her for killing their brother.

Part Two is set in London, where a magazine editor has an affair with a Macedonian war photographer.

He wants to fly her to Macedonia with him.

She's pregnant and her husband is gunned down in a restaurant over a Bosnian Serb dispute.

Part Three: The war photographer returns home and visits the woman he loved in childhood.

She's from a strict Muslim Albanian family.

Times have changed and it's almost impossible for them to commingle.

She's the mother of the girl who was missing from Part One.

She asked the photographer to help find and save the girl.

I visited a landmark to this seminal film, a stone bridge known locally as the Movie Bridge because it's been used in Manchevski movies and much of "Before The Rain" was filmed in nearby Mariovo.

I love "Before The Rain", it's a... I always recommend it to everybody.

And although I think that the strongest, like the biggest quality of the film, is that the while speaking about something that's so local and so authentic to our region, it manages to to speak clearly about the tensions and makes them in that way universal.

And they could be applied to any other part of the world.

It's something that's politically very present, always part of the news, always part of everyday conversations and dialogs.

But somehow it gets put aside when we write stories, which for me is it's very interesting to think about why.

So our stories are also ethnically clean, Like we write stories where we don't have Albanian characters, or Albanian filmmakers to write stories where they don't have Macedonian characters or they're only this Officer that appears somewhere, but not really part of the main plot.

And I mean, one reason also could be that the languages are just so different and you need to learn the other language.

There is no way to intuitively understand it or maybe use it in any basic form.

It's a completely, completely different family of languages.

And, I think this also contributes to this segregation between the communities.

I visited the charming city of Bitola during the Ottoman era, it was known as the City of consoles.

There are lovely archeological ruins here, Heraclea Lyncestis with remains of Roman baths, a courthouse, basilicas and my go to favorite an amphitheater.

Founded by Philip II of Macedon, this site was commercially significant before the Romans arrived in 168 BCE, and its situation along the Via Egnatia helped to have made it prosperous.

My interest in Bitola lies in its cinema history.

It was home to Janaki and Milton Manaki.

The Manaki brothers, considered to be the Balkans first filmmakers.

They ran a photo studio and later opened a cinema here.

I graduated from high school in an American high school.

So my English language class was mostly focused on the American literature and culture and the use of the English language.

So I think this is where I had my bases, like in my formative years, by reading these American Writers, I was also discovering my own emotions and experiencing my own initiation into the world because I was from 15 to 18, like the the age of high school.

And yeah, so some characteristics that I could connect all of them with is the simplicity of style, like the minimalism and how they treat human emotions, like they don't they don't start off with the idea to tell some big story about the world or some huge vision.

This is what I call that they don't want to take a chair and just, stand above everybody else in the group and behave like they know everything, you know, like, they stay low, they stay together with everybody else.

So you can really nicely identify with, with this, like ordinary people, small stories that they are working on, which are, of course, not small at all.

♪ Before 1875, the people occupying this area were largely referred to as Bulgarians, until Georgi Pulevski published a book of phrases and stated that Macedonians were a distinct nationality and that they are descendants of ancient Macedonians.

In 1903, the Internal Macedonian Revolutionary Organization rebelled against the Ottoman Turks.

While their short lived revolution was crushed, the Ottoman Empire didn't last for much longer, and Serbia ended up taking over the territory and eventually incorporated it into The Kingdom of Serbs, Croats, and Slovenes.

In 1934, the Soviet Comintern was the first organization to acknowledge a distinct nationality and language.

The Bulgarians retook control of the area during World War II, but were on the losing side of the war, and Macedonia became part of the new Yugoslavia, after which life industrialized rapidly.

Saints Cyril and Methodius are credited with creating the written Macedonian language in the 9th century.

They translated the Bible into a language that would be readable by the masses.

Previously, the Slavic language had not been codified, and so the monks created a precursor to Cyrillic called the Glagolithic alphabet, which allowed for the text to be written.

I loved Ana's film "The Children Will Come".

This 19 minute drama, written by Branko Kosteski and directed by Ana, is pure poetry cinematic eye candy.

The film has screened all over the world and won awards in Albania, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Ireland, Kosovo, Serbia and Spain.

A young new school teacher is sent from Skopje to a remote mountain village.

When she arrives, she discovers there are no children.

There is an elderly woman who works in the school and advises the young teacher that once she learns how to light a fire and keep the classroom warm, "The Children Will Come".

[in Macedonian] Ana drove me to Matka Canyon one of the places that most inspires her and a location she used in "The Children Will Come".

Ana seemed happy and in her element here, and she hopes to incorporate this location into more of her films.

The children Will come is the first film that I did.

It was my graduation work, and it was the film, the first film that I did with a budget.

I had applied it together with a producer at the National Film Fund, and I had received the full funding, which was available for a debut short film, so I could finally have myself working only on the directing and working with the actors, working with the crew, with the art department, with the camera department, and of course, not being all over the place and buying props or whatnot, buying costumes for the actors.

So this was the first time that I really had a like the luxury to feel what it was like to be a director who has this wonderful crew that were taking care of all other aspects of the pre-production and then production.

What inspired the story behind "The Children Will Come"?

Yeah, this is a script that was written by my friend and another scriptwriter called Branko Kosteski.

So I didn't write the script myself, but also I didn't just take the script like it didn't exist there freely for me to take, but it came out of a conversation that we had because we were also very close friends.

And we talk about different subjects, topics that are taking place in the country.

And the idea was born while we were discussing, the whole, like, identity strategy of the previous government to build a strong national narrative based on the on this ancient heritage of, of the Macedonian region, which historically and culturally speaking is generally based in the Hellenic culture.

But by doing this, they really erased a whole period of history, which is much more recent.

And that's the, the time of the enlightenment, which is the breaking away from the Ottoman Empire and the beginning of the building of the Macedonian national identity, which was generally taking place in different small villages.

And it was heavily based, rooted in the oral culture, oral literature, and connected with a lot of female voices as well.

As, you know, oral literature usually is.

The first Macedonian feature film is largely considered to be "Frosina" from 1952, about a woman whose husband is abroad to earn money.

As a result, she births her children alone and ends up burying most of them except her last child, who survives despite hardships, and he finds joy in life until war breaks out.

The first color feature film is "Miss Stone" from 1958, based on a true story.

This Yugoslav era movie is set at the turn of the century when the region is occupied by the Ottomans.

Resistance fighters kidnap an American missionary in order to raise money for their cause for freedom.

Prominent Macedonian filmmakers in the Yugoslav years include Kiril Cenevski, whose 1971 film "Black Seed" deals with the mistreatment of Macedonian soldiers in the Greek army, being transported to prison camps for being communists.

And Stole Popov, a highly respected filmmaker whose works bridged the gap between Yugoslavia and post-Yugoslavia years, including documentaries "Australia", "Fire", and "Dae", and his fiction features, "Happy New Year '49", "Tattoo", "Gypsy Magic", and "To The Hilt".

"Happy New Year '49" is a story of two very different brothers and deals with espionage and political tension between the Yugoslav Communist Party and Soviet Stalinism.

"Tattoo", from 1991, is a story about a grumpy man who gets wrongfully imprisoned and then dies as a result of police brutality.

Stole Popov became a professor of film directing in Skopje, training the next generation of Macedonian filmmakers on and I visited the Macedonian Cinematheque and Film Archives to see some of this rich legacy of cinema thrive.

Being a feminist, it's not just something that you are when you're asked if you are or you're not, you know, it's like every day you need to have this awareness of your thoughts.

Why are your thoughts the way they are?

Why are you behaving the way you are?

Are you supporting the, power structures around you, or are you balancing them out?

What is your influence into the world?

Because you have an influence.

Whatever you do.

You don't need to have, like, this work of art to influence people.

I mean, you just go out of your house, or you pick up your phone and you influence somebody, something and it's somebody's day, maybe somebody's week, somebody's life with your actions.

In Macedonia especially, it's quite normalized to, to sexualize women or to infantilize them, like to, to behave toward them as if we were children, maybe not completely able to do things.

Like, I had this once when I was in the pre-production of "The Children Will Come" and the location scout came to the office.

We were in the production company, and he came to the office and said, okay, let's go and see the location.

But not addressing me, but the men in the room.

And I was like, I'm supposed to come as well?

I'm the director, like, how are you going to choose the location?

And they were like, but you a girl, you shouldn't be, you know, bothered to go.

Now it's quite cold outside and it's not going to be the best conditions.

So yeah, we'll just send you pictures.

I was like, are you serious?

You were going to send me pictures and what am I supposed to do, just sit here because I'm a woman?

I mean, their intention was, of course, like, gentlemen inspired.

I get that.

And they're also part of the older generation of filmmakers.

So.

Yeah.

But still, I mean, you cannot just presume that, you can decide for me when it's a different function in the whole production.

[in Macedonian] "Neon Hearts" is a 16 minute drama written and directed by Ana Jakimska and co-written with Diana Voinea.

It's another beautifully made short that screened all over the world and picked up awards in Croatia, India, Italy and Romania.

The film, a co-production between Macedonia, Romania and Croatia, takes you into the world of a middle aged truck driver who feels the freedom to be himself while he's on the road where nobody knows him.

One night, he arrives back home to find his son has gone missing.

This story, which plays with linear timelines, has a nice use of domestic tension, great production design, and even some humor.

Lots of plot twists unfold.

By the end, we find the protagonist in an incredibly awkward situation, yet we feel bad for him.

Talk to me about "Neon Hearts" and what inspired you make "Neon Hearts" and how did the film come about?

Well, yeah, it was one of my exam films, "Neon Hearts" and it happened as a collaboration between me and a scriptwriter from Romania.

And I had a big problem, actually, during the casting of the film.

I cast all other actors, all the other characters, but for the main one, which was the, I think the most well-written character out of all, because he is the protagonist and the most developed character.

The first actor I approached, he asked me to call him again in one week, which I did, and then it was one more week, and then it was one more week.

And after a month, I just realized that he wasn't going to do it.

But he didn't want to tell me NO because it was a tricky situation.

Like, you don't say no to a gay character because then you're going to be this discriminatory guy.

But, you know.

Then the second one told me, yes, thank you for the offer.

Everything is very interesting.

But I have a family.

Yeah.

And then the third one was worried about how it might play out with his job, his colleagues, maybe his political ambitions, because he wanted to do something more than just work in the theatre, which, okay, I understand if it's politics involved, I guess.

Yeah, you need to be careful where you appear.

And then the guy, the actor who is the character in the film, he called me himself, and he said, I hear you have a problem with my colleagues.

Nobody wants to be a gay on screen, so I'll do it.

And he's a really well-known actor, and he has a high fee.

I mean, I couldn't pay him.

We had only like █100, yeah, for the whole thing, I mean, for his whole engagement.

Yeah, for his whole part.

[in Macedonian] I loved visiting the Macedonian town of Ohrid, situated on the stunning Lake Ohrid, which is said to be 300m deep and 3 million years old, making it one of Europe's deepest and oldest lakes.

I visited the church of Saint Sophia from the 11th century, with faded Byzantine era frescoes inside, and walked along the wood plank boardwalk on up to the famed Church of Sveti Jovan at Kaneo which is on a hillside cliff overlooking the water.

I continued hiking through the woods up to Samuel's Fortress, at one point the capital of the Bulgarian Empire, during the rule of Tsar Samuel at the turn of the 11th century.

It is believed to have been built on the site of earlier fortifications dating to the 4th century BCE, possibly built by King Philip II of Macedonia.

From here I walked to the upper gate of the walled town and to the ancient amphitheater from Hellenistic times said to been used as a classical theatre until the Romans took over and turned it into a gladiators ring.

Ohrid has been printing paper since the 16th century.

Another Macedonian literary legacy that I love.

I visited the National Workshop for Handmade Paper, a small shop and museum, where they demonstrate how they make paper by hand.

This shop has one of only two copies of the Gutenberg printing presses left in the world, and Ohrid is also known for its freshwater pearls, Not oyster pearls, rather, they're made of the scales of a fish endemic to and only found in Lake Ohrid.

The gorgeous pearls are handmade by locals in a secret process dating back to the early 1900s.

Created by two families.

The same families today are still crafting this jewelry.

You had said something to me the other day that kind of stuck with me, which was at least philosophically.

And I'll let you elaborate.

You felt maybe it was better when you were one unified country in the region, when there was the Yugoslavia Republic, versus having all these independent nation states.

Can you elaborate on that concept more?

Tell me what you were talking about.

Yeah.

I mean, this is, of course, all on an ideological level, and it's my presumptions of what it would work out like.

And we have history, of course, always as a reminder and as a teacher, that things don't always work out, that I realistically, because, I mean, technically, it would be amazing to have a country where people would, just put in the background their national identities, their religious identities, and just be interested into the, like in the community and into the communal growth and just technological achievement, cultural achievements, growth in all segments.

Yeah.

So this is, I think, the biggest benefit of Yugoslavia, but mostly because, in a more philosophical level, it would be a more humane, humanistic type of system where you would care about the individual qualities and put them in use for the whole community.

In 2005, the Macedonian-Italian co-production film "Bal-Can-Can" became Macedonia's highest grossing feature film.

"Bal-Can-Can" is a fast paced absurdist comedy, a satire of death mocking red tape bureaucracy.

Set during the 2001 Albanian terrorist conflict at Macedonia's borders, a pacifist tries to escape to Bulgaria's borders, claiming to be on vacation, and his grandmother dies unexpectedly on the way.

He struggles to get the death certificate.

It's a Balkans road trip movie.

From Macedonia to almost Bulgaria, Serbia to Montenegro to Bosnia.

In 2019, the documentary film "Honeyland" made Macedonian cinema history as the first documentary to be nominated for both Best Documentary Feature and Best International Feature at the 2020 Academy Awards, after winning three prizes at Sundance.

This doc was shot over the course of three years and follows wild beekeepers in the small Central Macedonian village of Bekirlijia Focused on a woman in her mid 50s.

She uses a sustainable approach to honey harvesting, which causes her to clash with her neighbors.

This is a slow paced film.

The directors describe filming in extremely challenging conditions, "In a village without roads, electricity, running water or available food, beaten by bees and fleas and over 40°C heat, or bitten by frost and cold in -20°°C."

From a filmmakers point of view, I find it really impressive that they shot this story at all, up close and personal with the bees and the beekeepers with seemingly full access to gain an intimate portrait of this family's life and trials.

My favorite Macedonian feature film of modern times is "Secret Ingredient."

It's a dark comedy and highly entertaining.

The protagonist is a fairly normal guy, works as a mechanic at a train station.

He has a wisecracking buddy.

While our heroes father is dying of cancer.

He steals a stash of drugs that were hidden in a train and starts baking cakes with the marijuana.

His father was healed in remission.

Just a coincidence, he says, and the father feels better than ever.

Starts telling his friends.

And soon the whole neighborhood of ailing people think our protagonist is a healer and wants in on the action.

It's really well shot, acted, set decorated, edited, with minimal but good use of music.

It has everything comedy, drama and it's refreshing that it's not your typical impoverished rural story we're used to seeing from this region.

It was Macedonia's pick for best Foreign Language Film.

Take into consideration that usually we have two films shot per produced per year.

So the audience is really excited and generally accepts really well new Macedonian films, because there are not many of them, there are few and they want to see them.

It's something like following the culture, just to be in touch, up to date with what Macedonian filmmakers are doing.

But I think that generally everybody who is not, who doesn't have any connection with film has always asked me, like, Why don't you do something funny?

Why don't you do a comedy?

Maybe do a film out of this?

Our conversation?

you know, like, some jokes that are getting thrown at the table, like, why don't you use some of these?

It looks really amazing.

I think it will be a huge hit.

And then it's not my type of... like, my cup of tea, it's not the type of films that I want to do, but I get it that the audience really wants something like, like this film that you saw, "Bal-Can-Can."

Yeah.

Stephanie- Oh "Bal-Can-Can" Yeah, "Bal-Can-Can."

"Bal-Can-Can" did really well.

I mean, people loved it.

It's still popular.

There are even memes with the characters.

They all know the actors.

They love it.

It's part of popular culture.

So at the moment we are in pre-production of a short film, which is also live action.

It's called "Blue Hour," and it's about the clash between the old and the new generation in Macedonia and through through this relationship of a mother and a daughter who come from the same background but have went into completely different ways.

I'm also talking about the population in the country actually like the the national identity at the moment, moving away from, from this rural identity into something that's modern and maybe a bit forcefully modern, like trying to make the big leap from the village to the metropolis in only one generation, or even less, and really pushing it hard.

[in Macedonian] As a traveler, there is so much to explore in Macedonia.

In addition to Skopje, and Lake Ohrid, there's Krusevo, where you can see the Ilinden Uprising Monument Built in 1974, also known as "The Makedonium," this funky, abstract Yugoslav air architecture is said to represent a 15th century warrior mace.

It contains a series of gorgeous stained glass windows and sculptures, each representing a turning point in Macedonia's history.

The Ilinden Uprising was North Macedonia's first step towards independence.

From the quiet hillside village of Jance located Mavrovo National Park, I hiked over the mountains to the small village of Galicnik, an almost depopulated town known for its traditional cheesemaking.

The hike was stunning.

The higher you get, the more panoramas you see.

Of all the little villages perched high up in the snow capped mountains with valleys and winding roads below.

I stopped in the village of Tetovo to see the gorgeous painted mosque, the most unique mosque I've ever seen, with lovely artistry.

The outside is painted with frescoes.

Inside one finds unbelievably beautiful murals, and a highlight of the trip was visiting the Kokino Observatory, a 3800-year-old archeological site in the north of the country.

Here you can find markers used to study the movement of the sun and the moon, which created a lunar calendar In 2001, a Bronze Age settlement was discovered here.

Though not much is actually known about the life of its inhabitants, it does make for a nice day trip hike.

In 2023, Ana moved away from Macedonia for a couple of years to finish her Masters Degree in the UK at Goldsmiths of the University of London.

Having stepped outside of her homeland, Ana became aware of how unknown her Macedonian culture is outside of the region.

She started to question how she speaks about her family and culture back home.

She questioned if she inadvertently adds an "orientalist" portrait of her homeland.

This discussion with her fellow filmmaking classmates, one from China and one from Malaysia, led her crew to make "No Ghosts in Strange Lands", about a Macedonian photographer failing to make it in London's art scene.

Who returns home for the first time since childhood to try to exploit the culture on camera in order to make a splash in London.

However, nothing goes as planned and our photographer protagonist ends up discovering her true culture and possibly haunted ancestry.

What does it mean to you to be 33?

Which you are approaching very soon?

For me, being at this point of my life means that I have stopped saying I'm okay with things that I'm really not okay with.

So in all spheres of life, I'm not going to be this nicely behaved girl anymore, that I was brought up to be like, always keeping quiet and trying not to offend anybody, trying not to break things.

I mean, why?

Break them!

Just take the freedom to break them if you need to do that in order to understand how they work, just don't be afraid of things.

- Yeah, I love it.

Wow.

[giggles] One common thread throughout Cinema Nomad's exploration of filmmaking around the world, is that making films is hard.

No matter where you live in the world, it's an extremely challenging endeavor, and I'm so compelled by the people who set out to make them.

So when people ask, what keeps me going with such an ambitious filmmaking project as Cinema Nomad, my answer is simple.

It's meeting filmmakers like Ana that is the pride and joy of this journey.

It keeps me motivated and incredibly inspired.

Ana was a delight to get to know.

Of course, having shared interests in languages, literature and cinema helps.

But beyond that, I like her films and love her determination to keep telling stories, reflecting her exploration of identity towards her place of birth.

Ana's films are intimate dives into the lives and emotions of her characters.

These tend to be my favorite type of films.

I am so thrilled to be able to call Ana a friend, and I can't wait to see what she films next, what stories she tells, and the mountains she'll move to make her dreams come alive on screen.

♪ Macedonian folk song ♪ To learn more about the Cinema Nomad filmmakers and dive deeper into the exciting world of global cinema.

Visit our website CinemaNomad.TV [footsteps] Steadee on!

[film slate claps] [Steadee Bear growl]