Milcho Manchevski is bringing his latest cinematic provocation, Sister Brother Manhole Cover, to the Tokyo International Film Festival, where the dark satire will have its world premiere in the 2026 Competition. The film follows two orphaned siblings surviving on the edges of post-communist Macedonian society, turning stolen bronze monuments and manhole covers into a means of survival. The trailer has now been unveiled through Variety, while Rome-based Coccinelle Film Sales is taking international sales to the Asian Contents & Film Market in Busan, opening the film to buyers beyond its festival debut.
The Tokyo premiere carries particular weight because of Milcho Manchevski’s remarkable festival history. His 1994 debut, Before the Rain, won the Golden Lion for Best Film at the Venice Film Festival and received an Academy Award nomination. More than three decades later, Manchevski remains closely connected to international festival cinema, having also brought Kaymak to Tokyo’s Competition in 2022.
Now, with Sister Brother Manhole Cover, the filmmaker returns with a story that uses an outrageous premise to explore survival, desperation and the strange ways people find dignity when society has left them with very little.
At the heart of the film are Malina and Viktor, a brother-and-sister duo who make a living by stealing bronze busts of national heroes. They melt down the metal and sell it as scrap, treating their criminal trade with an attitude that is as defiant as it is practical.
The story takes a sharply comic and unexpectedly brutal turn when a bronze head slips from Viktor’s hands and crushes his foot. What follows pushes the siblings into territory far beyond an ordinary survival story.
When a doctor arrives to treat Viktor, he demands sexual favors as payment. Faced with exploitation and desperation, Viktor reaches for a heavy manhole cover lying nearby, setting off a chain of events that changes the siblings’ lives.
The bizarre incident eventually brings Malina and Viktor into the orbit of a wealthy, blind elderly woman. Their relationship becomes an unexpected test of morality, forcing the siblings to reconsider what they are willing to do to survive and what they owe to another person.
Despite its unusual premise, Sister Brother Manhole Cover is not built simply around shock or absurdity. Manchevski frames the story as a social thriller-comedy, using its strange characters and situations to examine poverty, exploitation, family bonds and unconditional acceptance.
The film runs for 106 minutes and is an international production involving North Macedonia, Bulgaria, Serbia, Albania, Italy and the United Kingdom. Its cast includes Sara Klimoska as Malina, Filip Trajkovic as Viktor and Sonja Mihajlova as the elderly woman.
For Sara Klimoska, the film adds another distinctive role to a growing body of work that includes You Won’t Be Alone and Manchevski’s Willow.
The Tokyo International Film Festival has selected 15 films for its 2026 Competition from 1,892 entries representing 112 countries and regions, placing Manchevski’s film within a tightly selected international lineup.
Following its Tokyo world premiere, Sister Brother Manhole Cover will have another important stop on its festival and industry journey. Coccinelle Film Sales will present the film to international buyers at Busan’s Asian Contents & Film Market, giving the Macedonian production an opportunity to travel further into the global cinema market.
The international sales push gives the film a path beyond its festival debut, with Coccinelle Film Sales taking the title to an industry marketplace where buyers can discover the film following its Tokyo premiere. For an international production built around a story rooted in the lives of two siblings on the margins of society, the festival and market circuit will be an important part of its journey to audiences beyond its home region.
The film’s combination of dark satire, crime, family drama and social commentary also reflects the unusual nature of its central premise. Malina and Viktor’s criminal livelihood begins with stolen bronze monuments, but the chain of events surrounding Viktor’s injury and the manhole cover pushes their relationship with each other and the world around them into unfamiliar territory.
With Milcho Manchevski returning to Tokyo, a strikingly unconventional story at its center and a growing international sales push behind it, Sister Brother Manhole Cover arrives as one of the more distinctive titles in this year’s festival circuit. Its journey from the streets of Skopje to Tokyo and Busan begins with a simple but memorable promise: a brother, a sister and a manhole cover can lead somewhere entirely unexpected.
