Happy New 1903

1939, right before the beginning of the Second World War in Europe. Aleksandar Pingo, young, handsome lawyer from Veles, Macedonia, far on the south of the Balkans, lives his days as a bachelor.

The last remaining occupant of an old abandoned village uses a church bell to communicate with the last remaining occupant of a neighboring village. One day, the old man is extremely disturbed by the fact that the bell from the other village is silent. He decides to go to the other village, where he finds his friend dead. He buries him and then returns to his everyday life. After a while, the old man is disturbed again when the usual silence is broken by the bell from the other village.

In The Lower Prespa region, especially in the village of Nakolec, but also in the surrounding villages, for decades (and perhaps centuries) there has been a tradition of organically created coexistence based on mutual understanding and respect. The everyday life of the protagonists there and their mutual relations is actually a kind of model in which a certain code for togetherness and social cohesion between people of different ethnic, religious and other profiles is hidden.

Bale is a middle-aged man who became blind when he was a teenager. He used to live with his mother, his father, his brother and his two sisters. After finishing high school in Skopje he returned to Brajcino at his family. His family has not been a pleasant environment. Quarrels and rows fulfilled Bale’s everyday life. Having a father addicted to alcohol made problems inevitable. But besides all the disruptions, Bale have grown into a mature person that couldn’t succeed in life only because of its state of invalidity.

It depicts the life of the Macedonian poet and communist, Kočo Racin.