{"id":6338,"date":"2026-08-21T07:10:47","date_gmt":"2026-08-21T07:10:47","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/relocationobserver.com\/?p=6338"},"modified":"2026-08-21T07:10:47","modified_gmt":"2026-08-21T07:10:47","slug":"good-people-review-milcho-manchevskis-haunting-documentary-revisits-the-kocani-nightclub-fire-through-survivors-eyes","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/relocationobserver.com\/?p=6338","title":{"rendered":"\u2018Good People\u2019 Review: Milcho Manchevski\u2019s Haunting Documentary Revisits the Ko\u010dani Nightclub Fire Through Survivors\u2019 Eyes"},"content":{"rendered":"
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\n\tOn March 16, 2025, a fire broke out at the Pulse nightclub in the small North Macedonian town of Ko\u010dani, injuring hundreds and killing 63 people due to burn damage, smoke inhalation and other physical traumas sustained while attendees scrambled to flee through the venue\u2019s sole exit. The club had only one fire extinguisher and its ceiling was made of highly flammable material, while the venue\u2019s 250-person capacity was exceeded by double the amount of people, most of them between the ages of 16 and 25.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Read more Amazon MGM Studios Unveils Teaser for Kunal Kemmu\u2019s \u2018Vibe\u2019 (EXCLUSIVE)<\/a><\/p>\n

\n\tMaking its world premiere in Sarajevo\u2019s documentary competition, Milcho Manchevski\u2019s \u201cGood People\u201d leaves the broader political context to the journalists. Arriving a little over thirty years since his auspicious debut, the muscular war drama \u201cAfter the Rain,\u201d nabbed Venice\u2019s Golden Lion, this strikingly austere and undecorated film, which Manchevski self-funded, doesn\u2019t cover the vast institutional failures that precipitated the incident and increased its casualties. Instead, it assembles over 20 first-hand accounts by victims and witnesses, bringing to life the tragedy\u2019s harrowing timeline through testimonies entirely. The result is a haunting portrait of social collapse whose power is premised on the words and faces of survivors.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\n\tBookended by drone shots of the Macedonian countryside and a somber cello refrain by Novogradska, this 86-minute doc is otherwise composed of scoreless interviews with subjects seated in front of black curtains and captured in medium range. (Two brief exceptions include silent, phone-recorded footage of, first, the spark on the ceiling prior to the full break-out, and, second, an outside view of the club obscured by plumes of smoke.) The simplicity of the setup simplicity pays respect to the memory of the fallen, refusing to sensationalize the events or cater to morbid curiosity \u2014 principles that have dictated a long tradition of documentary filmmaking that privileges oral testimony, like Claude Lanzmann\u2019s \u201cShoah\u201d and Chantal Akerman\u2019s \u201cTell Me.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n

\n\tBut unlike those long take-heavy films, \u201cGood People\u201d cuts frequently between its subjects, a chorus-like effect that is sometimes choppy as editor Mishko Chunikhin flits between longer memories and observations as short as a few words. The doc starts out by describing the club\u2019s downward spiral, with survivors \u2014 some of whose burn marks you can observe on their necks and hands \u2014 sharing eerily similar experiences. The beginning of the fire was widely mistaken as a special effect put on by the pop group performing at the time, and the flames spread quicker than clubbers could realize what was happening.<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cMy eyes were seeing so many things that my brain couldn\u2019t process,\u201d says one of the more eloquent speakers, a young woman with shell-shocked eyes and flat-ironed hair who lost all of her friends in the incident. Proceeding chronologically through the night, the speakers recall navigating the chaos of people rushing toward the exit; and how this fatal stampede, along with asphyxiating conditions, knocked people unconscious, creating a \u201ccarpet of dead kids\u201d under which more people were trapped and sometimes killed by suffocation, all while \u201cburning alive.\u201d <\/p>\n

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\n\tFrequent fades to black and plain intertitles, displaying pithy phrases drawn from the interviews (like \u201cthat\u2019s it\u201d and \u201clike helpless animals\u201d), allow for moments of silence, encouraging the subjects\u2019 words to soak in. These pauses also give the documentary an air of mournful respect, making its pace more deliberate than the standard talking heads-doc that might be mistaken as a stylistic counterpart.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\n\tThe second half introduces some parents of survivors and interviews with a handful of locals and early escapees who (re-)entered the club to help pull out injured bodies. The doc\u2019s tagline \u2014\u00a0\u201cwhen good people burn in hell\u201d \u2014\u00a0comes off more than a bit crude, but the descriptions of people running out of the club burned and naked, their clothes and shoes torn off in the push to escape; or victims with bodies hot to the touch, their skin melting and ripping off the bone as rescuers pull them out from beneath piles of corpses, certainly justifies the metaphor. Against expectation, the film eschews neat narratives about survival and heroism. Ethics and normal human behavior are subsumed by \u201cpure animal instinct\u201d and \u201ckicking, clawing, and biting.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tIf this doesn\u2019t seem like a gracious revelation, there\u2019s a point to the deep horror that Manchevski draws out here. As one subject explains, she feels \u201cindignity\u201d to have been violated so deeply by what she endured and witnessed. \u201cGood People\u201d may not explore the structural inadequacies that allowed this catastrophe to happen, but it does remind us of the ease with which our modern world can slide back into medieval times \u2014 and the responsibility we have to prevent it.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Read more Lawmakers Offer Film Industry a Fix on California Tax Credit Cap<\/a><\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

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\t\t\u2018Good People\u2019 Review: Milcho Manchevski\u2019s Haunting Documentary Revisits the Ko\u010dani Nightclub Fire Through Survivors\u2019 Eyes<\/p>\n<\/h2>\n

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\t\tReviewed at Sarajevo Film Festival (Competition), Aug. 15, 2026. Running time: 86 MIN.<\/p>\n<\/h2>\n

    \n
  • \nProduction:<\/strong>
    \n(Documentary \u2014 North Macedonia) A Banana Film production. Producer: Milcho Manchevski.\t\t\t<\/li>\n
  • \nCrew:<\/strong>
    \nDirector, writer: Milcho Manchevski. Camera: Ivan Ivanovski. Editor: Mishko Chunikhin. Music: Novogradska.\t\t\t<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

    World premiering in competition at Sarajevo, Milcho Manchevski’s doc ‘Good People’ is a strikingly spare and harrowing portrait of social collapse.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":5874,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[4907,4579,1620],"class_list":["post-6338","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-film","tag-good-people","tag-milcho-manchevski","tag-sarajevo-film-festival"],"yoast_head":"\n\u2018Good People\u2019 Review: Milcho Manchevski\u2019s Haunting Documentary Revisits the Ko\u010dani Nightclub Fire Through Survivors\u2019 Eyes - Relocation Observer<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/relocationobserver.com\/?p=6338\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"\u2018Good People\u2019 Review: Milcho Manchevski\u2019s Haunting Documentary Revisits the Ko\u010dani Nightclub Fire Through Survivors\u2019 Eyes - 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