The Third Half

The Third Half is a 2012 Macedonian film directed by Darko Mitrevski. It deals with Macedonian football during World War II and the deportation of Jews from Macedonia. It is a story of love during wartime and a country's passion for football. The government of Macedonia considered the film of national interest and funded it with one million euros. The Third Half was selected as the Macedonian entry for Best Foreign Language at the 85th Academy Awards. Plot The film is set in what is today North Macedonia, then part of the Vardar Banovina, a province in Kingdom Yugoslavia, and follows the period shortly after the Tripartite Pact invasion of the region. In 1941, a young football player from Macedonia, Kosta, and a wealthy young Jewish woman, Rebecca, fall in love, despite her father's effort to keep them apart. With the war raging around their borders, the Macedonians remain cocooned in their world of patriotic pleasures, primarily concerned about getting the beleaguered Macedonia Football Club on a winning streak. Their manager hires the legendary German-Jewish coach Rudolph Spitz to turn them into champions. However when the Nazi occupation begins and they start deporting Jews, Kosta and his teammates realize that the carefree days of their youth are over. As the Nazis try to sabotage the outcome of the championship game, and Spitz's life is threatened, Kosta and his teammates rise to the challenge to protect their coach, with all of Macedonia cheering them on. Background The Third Half depicts the history of 7,148 Macedonian Jews who were deported to the gas chambers of Treblinka by the Bulgarian administrative and military authorities, who were cooperating with the Nazi regime. In February 1943, Bulgaria and Germany signed an agreement stipulating the deportation of Bulgarian Jews to camps in Poland. In March 1943, Bulgarian police rounded up the Jews of Thrace and Macedonia at night and placed them in detention camps under extremely harsh conditions. Their property and their houses were confiscated prior to their deportation in late March. Sealed trains transported 11,384 Jews, mainly via the Danube River, to death camps, from which almost none returned. The film was inspired by the true story of the FC Macedonia football team. The film is based also on an interview with the Shoah Foundation on that story given in 1998 by Neta Cohen, a Macedonian Holocaust survivor.