EXCLUSIVE: Rome-based Coccinelle Film Sales has acquired international sales rights to Venice Golden Lion-winner Milcho Manchevski’s new feature Sister Brother Manhole Cover.
Billed as a darkly humorous, emotionally charged drama, the North Macedonia-set film follows defiant siblings Malina and Viktor, who survive by stealing bronze statues of national heroes and melting them down for scrap.
After a failed theft leaves Viktor severely injured, the siblings are drawn into an unexpected relationship with the blind mother of the corrupt doctor who exploits them, forcing them to confront questions of guilt, survival and human connection in a morally fractured world.
The film stars Sara Klimoska (You Won’t Be Alone, Willow), Filip Trajakovic (Youth In Trouble) and Sonja Mihajlova (Lemonade).
It is the latest feature from Macedonian-American director Manchevski, whose debut Before The Rain won the Golden Lion in Venice in 1994 and received an Academy Award nomination for best international feature.
More recently, his feature Willow premiered at Toronto in 2019, while Kaymak premiered in Tokyo in 2022.
Sister Brother Manhole Cover is a Banana Film production, in co-production with Gala Film (Bulgaria), Sense Production (Serbia), Tirana Film Institute (Albania), Berkeley Media Group (UK), and Amarcord Production, in association with Augustus Color (Italy) and with the support of North Macedonia Film Agency, Bulgarian National Film Center, Film Center Serbia, Albanian National Center of Cinematography and Direzione Generale Cinema e Audiovisivo – Ministero della Cultura.
“Sister Brother Manhole Cover is a very powerful and deeply human film,” said Francesca Breccia of Coccinelle Film Sales. “What moved me most is the emotional relationship that unexpectedly develops at the centre of the story, as if two solitudes slowly learn to care for one another. It is a film that feels both intimate and universal, while carrying Milcho’s very distinctive cinematic voice.”
No comments yet