Skopje, 26 May 2025 (MIA) — Macedonian filmmaker Kiril Cenevski's family has donated the awards he won during his lifetime to the Cinematheque to keep and display, the Cinematheque said Monday in a press release. 

The awards include Cenevski's Golden Arena from the Pula Film Festival (1971), the Phoenix award from the Moscow International Film Festival (1971), the Yugoslav nomination for the Academy Award for Best International Feature (1972), the special award from Karlovy Vary IFF (1976), the CIDALC Silver Medal (1980) and the Cinematheque's Golden Lens for his outstanding contribution to Macedonian cinema (2013).

They are currently on display at the foyer of the Cinematheque's movie theater, the release said.

Kiril Cenevski (1943-2019) has been described as a unique, controversial figure in Macedonian filmmaking. He studied architecture in Skopje and developed an interest in directing during his university years. He began his career as an assistant director on television productions and documentaries in the late 1960s. 

After working with director Ljubisha Georgievski on the film "The Cost of the City" (1970), he made his filmmaking debut with "Black Seed" (1971). The film won all major festival prizes in Yugoslavia and was the first Macedonian movie to compete at international film festivals. 

His next feature film was "Misery" (1975).

In the 1970s, he also directed several documentaries for the Struga Poetry Evenings festival, portraying its Golden Wreath winners: the Italian poet Eugenio Montale, the festival's 1973 laureate; the Turkish poet Fazıl Hüsnü Dağlarca, the SPE 1974 laureate; the Senegalese poet Léopold Sédar Senghor, the SPE 1975 laureate; the French poet Eugène Guillevic, the SPE 1976 laureate; and the Spanish poet Rafael Alberti, the 1978 laureate.

Cenevski directed "The Lead Brigade" in 1980. In 1983, he received a degree in Motion Pictures from the University of Southern California's School of Cinema and Television. His last feature film was "The Knot" (1985).

According to the Cinematheque, Cenevski was often called "the rebel of Macedonian cinema" and described as "the man who pushed film art boundaries and surpassed his contemporaries." 

A posthumous DVD of his remastered films was released in 2019. mr/