--- title: "A documentary returns to the Kocani nightclub fire through the people who survived it" description: "Milcho Manchevski, the North Macedonian director of Before the Rain, has made a documentary out of survivor testimony from the 2025 Pulse nightclub fire in Kocani, which killed at least 63 people. Eighteen months on, the courts have still convicted no one." category: "Culture" category_url: https://newsparlor.com/category/culture author: "Sofia Russo" published: 2026-08-21T07:40:49.000Z updated: 2026-08-21T07:40:49.000Z canonical: https://newsparlor.com/article/a-documentary-returns-to-the-kocani-nightclub-fire-through-the-people-who-surviv tags: ["documentary", "north-macedonia", "milcho-manchevski", "kocani", "film"] --- # A documentary returns to the Kocani nightclub fire through the people who survived it Milcho Manchevski, the North Macedonian director of Before the Rain, has made a documentary out of survivor testimony from the 2025 Pulse nightclub fire in Kocani, which killed at least 63 people. Eighteen months on, the courts have still convicted no one. Milcho Manchevski has spent most of his career in fiction. His first feature, Before the Rain, won the Golden Lion at Venice in 1994 and was nominated for an Academy Award, and the films that followed were similarly shaped, written and staged. His new work is a documentary, and its method is close to the opposite of staging: survivors of a fire, seated against a plain backdrop, talking. The film is called Good People. [It premiered at the Sarajevo Film Festival this month, runs 86 minutes, and is built from more than twenty first-hand accounts](https://filmneweurope.com/news/macedonia-news/item/128147-milcho-manchevski-s-documentary-good-people-to-premiere-in-sarajevo) from people who were inside the Pulse nightclub in Kocani, or who lost someone there. ## What happened at the Pulse [The fire broke out during a concert on the night of March 16, 2025](https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2025/3/16/at-least-51-people-killed-in-nightclub-fire-in-north-macedonia). Sparks from pyrotechnics used during a performance by the hip-hop duo DNK ignited the ceiling of a venue packed well beyond its capacity, most of the crowd young. The death toll climbed for weeks as the badly burned died of their injuries, reaching at least 63, with more than 150 injured. It is the deadliest disaster in North Macedonia's recent history, in a town of roughly 25,000 people, which meant that almost everyone in Kocani knew somebody who was in the building. What investigators established afterward is what makes the fire so difficult for the country to put behind it. The club had obtained its license illegally. It had no adequate emergency exits, was not properly equipped with fire extinguishers, and was lined with highly flammable material. None of these were discovered after the fact by forensic reconstruction. They were conditions anyone conducting an inspection should have found. ## Still no verdicts [Eighteen months on, no one has been convicted](https://balkaninsight.com/2026/03/16/a-year-after-north-macedonia-nightclub-tragedy-convictions-remain-far-off/bi/). Prosecutions have been brought against a wide circle of people, including the club's owner and officials whose job it was to inspect and license venues, and several separate cases are working through the courts. One concerns police officers who were carrying out checks on hospitality venues the night of the fire. The slow pace has driven repeated protests, and it is the context in which the documentary arrives. In a case where the institutional account is still incomplete, first-hand testimony carries more weight than it otherwise might. ## The choice not to explain Manchevski's approach is deliberately unadorned. The interviews are largely unscored, the subjects speak without narration guiding the viewer toward conclusions, and the film is bookended with landscape footage. There is no reconstruction of the fire and no expert brought in to interpret what the survivors describe. That restraint is a stronger editorial choice than it may sound. A documentary about institutional failure could easily be built as an argument, with each testimony recruited as evidence for a thesis about corruption. This one leaves the accounts standing on their own, which asks more of the viewer and risks less on behalf of the people speaking. Early reviews have responded to that restraint, describing a film that presents survivors as people rather than as symbols. [The director, producers and distributors have waived their profits, with proceeds going to victims of the fire](https://filmneweurope.com/news/macedonia-news/item/128147-milcho-manchevski-s-documentary-good-people-to-premiere-in-sarajevo), and the film was financed privately rather than through the national film agency. In a country where the state's handling of the disaster is itself the subject of prosecutions, that funding arrangement reads as a statement in its own right. ## Sources - ['Good People' Review: Milcho Manchevski's Documentary Revisits the Kocani Nightclub Fire](https://variety.com/2026/film/reviews/good-people-review-1236839789/) - [Milcho Manchevski's documentary Good People to premiere in Sarajevo](https://filmneweurope.com/news/macedonia-news/item/128147-milcho-manchevski-s-documentary-good-people-to-premiere-in-sarajevo) - [At least 59 people killed in nightclub fire in North Macedonia](https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2025/3/16/at-least-51-people-killed-in-nightclub-fire-in-north-macedonia) - [A year after North Macedonia nightclub tragedy, convictions remain far off](https://balkaninsight.com/2026/03/16/a-year-after-north-macedonia-nightclub-tragedy-convictions-remain-far-off/bi/)