“Manchevski chooses the simplest but most effective approach, deliberately stripping away all embellishments and presenting the information in the most direct way possible”

Life can change in a single moment, and we very likely can’t see it coming when it does. This is something that we’ve found to be exceptionally true when looking at any of the major tragedies that have taken place over time, especially those that could’ve easily been avoided. In 2025 hundreds of young patrons at Pulse, a nightclub in the Kočani neighborhood of North Macedonia, came to learn this lesson when their celebrations turned into a life-changing tragedy after the club was set alight due to poor electrical work, leading to hours of extreme panic as they attempted to flee, only to find themselves trapped. Rescue efforts proved to be mostly futile due to the sheer volume of people present. This harrowing event is the inspiration behind Good People, the most recent directorial outing of the acclaimed Milcho Manchevski, who returns to his native country to tell this story in the form of a simple, direct documentary that examines the aftermath of these events. Many documentaries tend to explain tragedy, whereas this one is more focused on bearing witness to these events, refusing to soften the reality and instead providing an in-depth exploration. An unflinching, direct depiction of the events surrounding the Pulse fire in which 63 people lost their lives, the film transitions from the reconstruction of a catastrophic night into a harrowing meditation on grief and survival, achieving this through stripping away traditional tropes of the documentary genre and going in pursuit of a more nuanced depiction of a life-changing tragedy through the eyes of ordinary people who endured an unimaginable loss.

There’s very little explored in Good People that can be considered particularly original, since on the surface it appears to be a relatively straightforward account of the events surrounding the tragedy. However, it becomes quite clear that something deeper is guiding the film, which extends itself beyond simply a detailed account of the events and instead sets out to examine how a moment of joy and celebration can instantly become an irreversible catastrophe that can impact an entire community. The focus is primarily on the survivors and the people who ultimately became involved in the tragedy through the rescue efforts, some of whom are parents of the deceased. Each one of these people are attempting to process what they had experienced, their trauma being presented as something that simply cannot be neatly resolved. It’s through this that we see one of the film’s core themes, which is that of grief as a shared experience. We often tend to look at trauma as something intensely personal, but when dealing with such a large-scale tragedy it’s impossible not to view the aftermath as one of intense sorrow felt by an entire community, who struggle to process these events. This gives Good People extraordinary emotional weight, turning each testimony into a meaningful piece of a much larger discussion in which the power of community is highlighted. It shows how these different people have processed the tragedy as a group, their suffering creating a sense of unity that has aided them considerably in the process of healing from the pain caused by this disaster, something that many of us would consider entirely unfathomable.

When handling such intimidating subject matter, we’d imagine any director would need to find a specific way to express not only the facts of the events, but also the deep emotional complexities. Manchevski chooses the simplest but most effective approach, deliberately stripping away all embellishments and presenting the information in the most direct way possible. Good People consists almost entirely of talking-head interviews with the people who were present (both the victims present in the nightclub and the people who attempted to rescue them), and one piece of archival footage (presented without sound) that shows the early stages of what was to become a life-changing tragedy for these people. The complete lack of any additional directorial flourishes (such as music, narration or B-roll) removes any sense of interference by the filmmakers, giving the film an additional feeling of honesty and vulnerability, and presenting the reality of these events without any mediation or unintentional manipulation of the facts by the filmmakers, who were not witnesses to the tragedy. These young people are invited to share their recollections, encouraged to be as open as they want, which gives the film a sense of confessional intimacy. It moves between different perspectives, piecing together a chronology of the events (both before and after the fire) into a mosaic of vivid testimonies, each revealing another emotional layer. Their voices shake with hesitation and profound sadness, and the vulnerability present in the moments where silence says more than words, making it clear that their lives were irrevocably changed. The straightforward, unfurnished style makes the film even more disconcerting and harrowing, since the entire narrative is put in the hands of the survivors and witnesses, with all of the most devastating moments being the result of what these people are willing to share.

Good People is not an easy film, both conceptually and structurally. It can be daunting to be presented with a documentary that is composed entirely of testimonies delivered by the witnesses to a harrowing event, where every bit of information we learn is through their perspective rather than being pieced together by those who were not present. The director’s refusal to sensationalize is admirable, since he realizes that the only way to accurately portray not only the event itself, but the deeper impact it had on these young people who will forever carry the weight of such an experience and are likely never going to fully recover from the trauma. The bare-boned, unfurnished filmmaking style may seem austere, but it is ultimately the most appropriate way to honor both the people who survived by giving them the chance to process these events, as well as those who perished by honoring their memory. In both cases, they are portrayed not as merely symbols or statistics, but deeply complex individuals who experienced something inconceivable, and the film highlights their active efforts to work through the trauma. Grief is an ongoing process, and in crafting a film in which dozens of different perspectives on the same event are explored, Manchevski shows how it can be shared by an entire community. Good People takes devastating subject matter and uses it as the foundation for a moving memorial that is honest and deeply compassionate, showing the astonishing resilience of a community to work through the bleakest and most harrowing of circumstances on the path towards healing.