The Third Half (2012)
"Treto poluvreme" (original title)

Determined to build the best football club in the country, Dimitry hires the German coach, Rudolph Spitz, to galvanize his rag tag team but - when the first Nazi tanks roll through the city and Rebecca, the beautiful daughter of a local banker, elopes with his star player, all Dimitry's plans must change.

Director:

Darko Mitrevski

Writers:

Darko Mitrevski, Grgur Strujic

Stars:

Katarina Ivanovska, Sasko Kocev, Richard Sammel

1 win.

Cast

Cast overview, first billed only:
Katarina Ivanovska	...	Rebecca
Sasko Kocev	...	Kosta
Richard Sammel	...	Spitz
Rade Serbedzija	...	Don Rafael
Emil Ruben	...	Garvanov
Mitko Apostolovski	...	Dimitriy
Verica Nedeska	...	Jamilla
Igor Angelov	...	Afrika
Toni Mihajlovski	...	Pancho
Gorast Cvetkovski	...	Skeptic
Oliver Mitkovski	...	Yordan
Ivica Dimitrijevic	...	Prof
Aksel Mehmet	...	Shiljo (Goofy)
Dimitrija Doksevski	...	Gengys
Milan Tocinovski	...	Manga

Storyline

Determined to build the best football club in the country, Dimitry hires the German coach, Rudolph Spitz, to galvanize his rag tag team but - when the first Nazi tanks roll through the city and Rebecca, the beautiful daughter of a local banker, elopes with his star player, all Dimitry's plans must change.

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Plot Keywords:

football | soccer | holocaust | bulgaria

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Genres:

Drama | History | Romance | Sport | War

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Details

Official Sites:

Official site

Country:

Macedonia Czech Republic USA

Language:

Macedonian German Ladino Bulgarian English Serbian

Release Date:

27 September 2012 (Macedonia)

Also Known As:

The Third Half

Filming Locations:

Macedonia

Company Credits

Production Co:

Kino Oko, fx3x

Technical Specs

Runtime:

113 min

Sound Mix:

Dolby Digital

Color:

Color

Aspect Ratio:

2.35 : 1

Did You Know?

Trivia

The official submission of Macedonia to the Best Foreign Language Film of the 85th Academy Awards 2013.

User Reviews

not just a movie

People already commented on the positive and negative sides of the movie as an art work. What I want to stress on here is that this is not just a movie. It is a tool of propaganda (funny, we live in the 21st century but these things still exist) sponsored by the government of the Former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia and targeting specifically Bulgaria. This is a well thought out strategy - nowadays people, especially young ones (and this is even more true for those in Macedonia ) learn things of the past through movies, not so much by reading authentic books. Government of FYROM paid millions to promote a story that blurs the truth about the times and events happening in that movie. Maybe it's worth mentioning that there exists already a movie done by the Russians in the 60s with a similar title and storyline, showing a soccer game between Ukraine and the Nazis. Someone before me tried to give a historical account (Macedonian version). Here I'll briefly state few things. Macedonia as a geographic region was indeed under the rule of the Ottoman Empire for 5 centuries. But for the last 23 centuries history doesn't know a state called Macedonia. So when people talk about partitioning of Macedonia after the Balkan wars of 1912-1913 it is not to be understood partitioning of a country, rather a partitioning of a region of the Ottoman Empire. It is not to be understood also that there was a nationality called Macedonians at that time - all respectful censuses but especially the ones of the Ottoman Empire list the population in Macedonia as composed of few ethnic groups - Bulgarians (predominant ethnicity), Greeks, Albanians, Vlahs, Turks, Gypsies and Serbians. It is also historical fact recognized even by some of the Macedonian historians that the Macedonian revolutionaries called themselves Bulgarians. Having in mind these facts it is hard to say Bulgaria was occupying Macedonia after the Balkan wars. Bulgaria fought over Macedonia in 3 bloody wars, with a lot of casualties and lost those wars which resulted in bigger parts of that land going to Serbia and Greece. Those two started on a brutal campaign of converting Macedonians to Serbian or Greece consciousness. This has been taking place in FYROM for close to 100 years now. Bulgaria indeed sided with The Axis during WW2. It didn't however occupy Yugoslavia and Greece - Nazis did. Then Germany knowing Bulgaria's aspirations towards Macedonia gave Bulgaria those land for administration so that Germany can free resources for the Eastern Front. There are documents and pictures showing the way the Macedonian population met the Bulgarian troops then - flowers, and celebrations, something today's FYROM rulers like to deny. Now we come to soccer. The new Bulgarian government in Macedonia allowed the creation of the soccer team called Macedonia. Mind you that during the Serbian rule the word Macedonia/Macedonian was forbidden for use - that land was called Vardar Banovina and was considered by the Serbs as part of old Serbia. Not did only Bulgarians allowed a team called Macedonia but they also included it in the national league and championship. Hardly facts that point to oppression and discrimination. Fact is that team played several games not only in Macedonia but in old Bulgaria, too. An if memory serves well it reached 2nd place in the championship. The coach for that team was a Jew, the prototype for the character in the movie. Now about the Jews. Bulgaria did adopt anti-Jewish laws when it joined the axis - those were actually quite similar to the ones in Nazi Germany. Since Bulgaria was administrating Macedonia under the occupation of Germany, Germans were actually the ones setting the rules. Bulgarian police did participate in the gathering of the Jews from Macedonia but their transportation to Poland and Triblinka was done by the Germans, not by Bulgarians as the movie tries to imply. And here comes the interesting part. The Jews form the old territory of Bulgaria were destined to be sent to Poland too. But it was the Bulgarian public, the Bulgarian Orthodox church, politicians and intellectuals who rose against those plans, stood against Nazis and their Bulgarian servants and DID NOT allow any of the 48,000 Bulgarian Jews to be deported. On the other hand, no one in Macedonia stood beside their Jewish population when they were gathered and deported to Poland. Even many Macedonian merchants were happy to see them go because that meant less competition for them. An interesting fact is that the Jewish coach of the soccer team was actually taken off the deportation train - something solicited by the Bulgarians. It is very easy now to build Holocaust Museums and make movies but when time called for action no action was taken. Macedonians nowadays like to say they couldn't do anything (not even their glorious partisans) because they were under occupation. But so was Denmark - a country about the size of Macedonia, and Denmark managed to save her Jews. In fact Bulgaria and Denmark are the two countries in Europe that didn't allow the deportation of the Jews. It is quite unfortunate that those 11,800 Macedonian Jews were deported and killed in Treblinka but even more disgusting is that Macedonians used the money from the nationalized Jewish property to build their Holocaust Museum and perhaps finance the movie. For the years since the WW2 ended Macedonians were purposefully brain-washed by the Tito communists to eliminate any trace of Bulgarian consciousness and instigate prehistoric hatred towards Bulgaria. Because FYROM is a new country without significant history they are trying to invent one either by stealing history from their neighbors or falsifying historical facts. And one of the results is this movie. There is a good article by a Macedonian Jew about FYROM and the Jews -"Macedonia's Hopeful Holocaust". If you google together "Sam Vaknin" and Holocaust you'll find it - it usually comes first in the list and it is a good read.