Macedonian auteur Milcho Manchevski (Venice Golden Lion-winning Before the Rain, Dust, Willow) is taking his eighth feature-length film and first documentary, Good People, to its world premiere in the Sarajevo Film Festival's Documentary Competition. Cineuropa exclusively brings you the film's trailer.

In March 2025, a fire broke out at the illegal nightclub Puls in Kochani, a small town in North Macedonia, in an unprecedented tragedy that claimed 63 lives. Just a month later, Manchevski began shooting the documentary, in which witnesses speak about their personal experiences. An unflinching meditation on grief, survival and the stubborn grace of human connection, Good People portrays its survivors and quiet heroes not as symbols but as people – aching, enduring and profoundly real.

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Whether they were members of the audience, caught up in the stampede in which many people suffocated or burned to death, or accidental rescuers driven by the urge to find friends or family members, or simply to help those trapped inside the club, these people speak to an entirely restrained, objective camera as if confiding in a therapist. In the process, mere facts become intimate testimonies and, transcending the documentary form, intertwine with philosophy, ethics, psychology and humanism, reaching far beyond the local context to address universal questions of good and evil, life and death, and humanity's relationship with them.

The film's tagline is "When good people burn in hell", and Manchevski says: "This film is theirs. We were there only to offer support, to channel their words, thoughts, experiences and emotions. I didn't want to manipulate anything. Our job as filmmakers – together with editor Miško Čunihin and cinematographer Ivan Ivanovski – was to provide a medium through which their words, thoughts and emotions could be preserved for the world and for future generations. As filmmakers, we are trained to shape cinematic material, but I decided that we should take a back seat to the words of these good people. We adopted a Spartan, ascetic, minimalist approach, one that would keep the viewer as close as possible to the lived experience."

Good People was produced by Manchevski for Banana Film and executive-produced by Tatjana Kjurchinska-Pepeljugoska and Ludovico Cantisani.

Check out our exclusive trailer below: