The Third Half (2012)

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 (co-writer)

Stars:

Katarina Ivanovska, Sasko Kocev, Richard Sammel

1 win & 1 nomination.

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 | bulgaria | soccer | holocaust | 

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Genres:

Drama | History | Romance | Sport | War

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Did You Know?

Trivia

Atlanta Jewish Film Festival, Narrative Award Winner: 2014

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Goofs

The film contains several factual mistakes that are very easy to be checked, because there is a video and photo archive of this football match between FC Makedonia and FC Levski in the archive ot SS.Cyril and Metodius National Library in Sofia. For example, nowhere in the meeting is not waving Nazi flags, like shown in the movie. The film argues that the players of FC Levski raise their hands in a Nazi salute "Heil Hitler", but as the link below shows that hands of both of the teams are raised and it is not a Nazi salute, but simply hands raised in the air. At the second photo from the link below you may see that actually as a Nazi salute "Heil Hitler" have raised the players of FC Macedonia. One more factual mistake is that at the movie is shown that the Bulgarian administrative and military authorities are deporting the Jews from Skopie and two more cities to the gas chambers of Treblinka. The truth is that the Bulgarian police at this area is under german control. Factual mistake is that on the carriages used for the Jews deportation is written "BDZ" (Bulgarian State Railways), but at the photos from the same period is visible that this is not true, because in fact the carriages arrives from Germany and they belong to the Third Reich.

User Reviews

Entertaining, if the political side is a bit crude

In Macedonia, during World War II, a football team hires a German coach to improve its results. But the war will son caught up with the team, as the German-allied Bulgarian army invades the country. Sasko Kocev stars as Kosta, a handsome if a somewhat rakish footballer. Kosta pursues the beautiful Rebecca (Katarina Ivanovska), the daughter of Don Raphael (veteran actor Rade Serbezidja), a wealthy Jewish businessman. Richard Sammer is Spitz, the German trainer, who is persecuted by the authorities after they find he is a Jew (this is based on a real character, though many details were changed). The movie also covers a lot of political issues, like the Bulgarian-Macedonian rivalry, which I can't comment on deeply since it is a territory I'm quite unfamiliar with. This political aspect can be quite crude. For instance, all the Bulgarian characters look bad here, starting with the nasty General Gorvanov (a great performance of Emil Ruben). Overall, this is an entertaining film. Note: the former Yugoslavia seems to have cornered the market on period football films: some years ago, there was a fine Serbian film called Bog Te Video, about the Yugoslavian team that played in the 1930's World Cup.

Details

Official Sites:

Official site

Country:

Republic of North Macedonia Czech Republic USA

Language:

Macedonian German Ladino Bulgarian English Serbian Spanish

Release Date:

27 September 2012 (Republic of North Macedonia)

Also Known As:

The Third Half

Filming Locations:

Macedonia

Box Office

Budget:

EUR2,300,000 (estimated)

Company Credits

Production Co:

Kino Oko, fx3x, I/O post

Technical Specs

Runtime:

113 min

Sound Mix:

Dolby Digital

Color:

Color

Aspect Ratio:

2.35 : 1