The Third Half
Director Darko Mitrevski
Staring Katarina Ivanovska, Sasko Kocev, Richard Sammel
Rated M
Score 6/6

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.

This movie was inspired by the story of the football team FC Macedonia and Neta Koen’s story who eloped with a football player inspiring the movie. With most historical movies there will always be questions over how much of the movie is truth and how much has been adapted for artistic purposes. The Third Half has met a degree of controversy because Evgeni Kirilov, Andrey Kovatchev and Stanimir Ilchev Bulgarian members of the European Parliament was an “attempt to manipulate Balkan history” and “spread hate” on the part of the Republic of Macedonia against its neighbours.
This was actually a very interesting movie dealing with an aspect of World War 2 I was not overly familiar with, and this added historical aspect to the movie kept The Third Half from being your stereotypical ‘sports movie’. This in turn was balanced out by the ‘sports movie’ aspects that kept things from becoming to grim.
Sasko Kocev gave a brilliant performance and he has this roguish smile that seemed to light up the screen. I also loved the chemistry between Sasko Kocev and Katarina Ivanovska.