The Third Half

The film is set in North Macedonia, then part of Yugoslavia and follows the period shortly after the Nazi invasion of the region.[2] In 1941, a young soccer player from Macedonia, Kosta (Sasko Kocev), and a wealthy young Jewish woman, Rebecca (Katarina Ivanovska), fall in love, despite her father's effort to keep them apart. With the war raging around their borders, the Macedonians remain cocooned in their world of patriotic pleasures, primarily concerned about getting the beleaguered Macedonia Football Club on a winning streak. Their manager hires the legendary German-Jewish coach Rudolph Spitz to turn them into champions. But when the Nazi occupation begins and they start deporting Jews, Kosta and his teammates realize that the carefree days of their youth are over. As the Nazis try to sabotage the outcome of the championship game, and Spitz's life is threatened, Kosta and his teammates rise to the challenge to protect their coach, with all of Macedonia cheering them on.[3]

The Third Half depicts the history of 7,148 Macedonian Jews who were deported to the gas chambers of Treblinka by the Bulgarian administrative and military authorities, who were cooperating with the Nazi regime. In February 1943, Bulgaria and Germany signed an agreement stipulating the deportation of Bulgarian Jews to camps in Poland. In March 1943, Bulgarian police rounded up the Jews of Thrace and Macedonia at night and placed them in detention camps under extremely harsh conditions. Their property and their houses were confiscated prior to their deportation in late March. Sealed trains transported 11,384 Jews, mainly via the Danube River, to death camps, from which almost none returned.[4] The film was inspired by the true story[5][6] of the FC Macedonia football team.[7] The film is based also on an interview to the Shoah Foundation on that story given in 1998 by Neta Koen (current name Marija Mladenovska)[8] a Macedonian Holocaust survivor. The Jewish coach of FC Macedonia Illés Spitz who is also a Macedonian Holocaust survivor was rescued by the Bulgarian club's managers.[9]

• Sasko Kocev as Kosta
• Katarina Ivanovska as Rebecca Cohen
  • Bedija Begovska as Rebecca in 2012
• Richard Sammel as Rudolph Spitz, a Prussian footballer-turned-coach hired to coach FC Macedonia
• Rade Šerbedžija as Don Rafael Cohen, a wealthy Jewish banker and Rebecca's father
• Emil Ruben as Garvanov, a Bulgarian colonel
• Mitko S. Apostolovski as Dimitrija, the owner of FC Macedonia
• Toni Mihajlovski as Pancho
• Igor Angelov as Afrika
• Gorast Cvetkovski as Skeptic
• Oliver Mitkovski as Jordan
• Igor Stojchevski as Cezar
• Dimitrija Doksevski as Gengys
• Bajram Severdzan as Choro
• Whitney Montgomery as Rachel, Rebecca's granddaughter
• Zvezda Angelovska as Blagunja, Pancho's wife
• Verica Nedeska as Zamila, Rebecca's friend
• Petre Arsovski as Papas, Dimitrija's friend
• Meto Jovanovski as a rabbi
• Salaetin Bilal as a shoemaker
• Petar Mircevski as a barber

The film was directed by Darko Mitrevski and supported by the Macedonian Film Fund, the Holocaust Fund of the Jews from Macedonia, The Jewish Community of Macedonia and the Czech State Fund. It was declared a film of a national interest by the Macedonian Government.[10] The film was shot in Skopje, Bitola and Ohrid.[11] Filming took place between September 10[12] and October 27, 2011.[13][14]

Writing for Cineuropa, Vladan Petković stated that The Third Half was the most ambitious Macedonian film since Before the Rain (1994). He went on to praise the setting, lauding the director for managing to "put together all the complicated details of the period and the geopolitical situation". Petković highlighted Sammel's acting as the strongest and dubbed it "the real emotional anchor of the film".[15]

The film was selected as the Macedonian entry for the Best Foreign Language Oscar at the 85th Academy Awards, but it did not make the final cut for nomination.[16]

Evgeni Kirilov, Andrey Kovatchev and Stanimir Ilchev—Bulgarian members of the European Parliament—expressed outrage over the film and called upon European Commissioner for Enlargement Štefan Füle to reprove the Republic of Macedonia over the film. They claimed the film was an "attempt to manipulate Balkan history" and "spread hate" on the part of the Republic of Macedonia against its neighbours.[17] The director of the film denied the accusations; he and the film crew described the objections to the film as an example of Holocaust denial.[8]

In late November 2011, the Macedonian media alleged that Member of the European Parliament Doris Pack, of Germany, dismissed the Bulgarian politicians' criticism of the film.[18] Subsequently, in an extraordinary meeting of the EU Committee on Foreign Affairs attended by the Foreign Minister of the Republic of Macedonia, Doris Pack denied this allegation.[19][20]

• The Holocaust in Bulgaria
• List of submissions to the 85th Academy Awards for Best Foreign Language Film
• List of Macedonian submissions for the Academy Award for Best Foreign Language Film

• Official website
• The Third Half at IMDb
• Darko Mitrevski website
• Euronews on The Third Half
• The Holocaust in Macedonia (source: United States Holocaust Memorial Museum)
• The deportation of the Macedonian Jews to Treblinka (source: Yad Vashem)
• Empty Boxcars (2011) Documentary * at IMDb link Vimeo