Macedonia chooses The Liberation of Skopje for Oscars

Macedonia has chosen The Liberation of Skopje by father-son team Rade and Danilo Šerbedžija as its submission for the foreign-language film category at the 89th Academy Awards.

The Macedonian-Croatian-Finnish co-production tells the story of eight-year-old Zoran’s experience of the occupation and liberation of Skopje, including the trauma of seeing his Jewish friend Renata Rossman and her family being taken away to a concentration camp.

No strangers to the wartime story, both Rade and Danilo starred in the original 1980 stage version of The Liberation of Skopje, by Slovenian stage director and playwright Dušan Jovanović.

Macedonia has submitted 14 films for the foreign-language category at the Oscars since 1994, but only the first, Milcho Manchevski’s Before the Rain, was nominated. Could The Liberation of Skopje be the second?

Source: The Hollywood Reporter