Before The Rain: The Criterion Collection (1994) Rating: Starring: Rade Serbedzija, Katrin Cartlidge, Gregoire Colin Director: Milcho Manchevski Category: Drama, Foreign, War Studio: Criterion Subtitles: English Length: 113 mins Want to buy?           The first film made in the newly independent Republic of Macedonia, Milcho Manchevski's Before The Rain crosscuts the stories of an orthodox Christian monk (Gregoire Colin), a British photo agent (Katrin Cartlidge), and a native Macedonian war photographer (Rade Serbedzija) to paint a portrait of simmering, entrenched ethnic and religious hatred about to reach its boiling point. Made during the strife of the war-torn Balkan states in the nineties, this gripping triptych of love and violence is also a timeless evocation of the loss of pastoral innocence, and remains one of recent cinema's most poetic evocations of the futility of war.