Fifteen years after her first feature film ‘Does it Hurt – the first Balkan Dogma’ director Aneta Lesnikovska returns to her native Macedonia and finds that home isn’t what it used to be: three actors starring in her film debut committed suicide and one is serving a sentence for drug trafficking. Her hometown Skopje spent almost €700 million (20% of the annual Government budget) on a neo-classical re-modelling of the center of the city, creating a framework for the renewal of the Macedonian identity. She embarks on an investigation: What the hell became of her country and her friends?

FEW MONUMENTS MORE, FEW PEOPLE LESS, investigates at what cost the remodeling of a nation comes. By Aneta’s observations the audience will connect the dots between two seemingly isolated events; the destruction of a generation – epitomized by the deceased actors of her previous film – and the megalomanic project Skopje 2014 leading to the bankruptcy of a society. She creates a new perspective on apparently incoherent happenings and shows the bigger context, how this is all connected.

Because the deculturization goes beyond facades and statues, it is deeply rooted in society with disastrous consequences. What is left in the remnants of this new city, is the search for identity. On a national level as a nation, and on a personal level to learn how to survive and navigate this new status quo.

In this political documentary we reflect, but moreover, try to understand what happened in this period of time in Macedonian history, by means of personal stories of the deceased intelligentsia. 

DIRECTOR ANETA LESNIKOVSKA