Winner of the Golden Lion Award, 1994 Venice Film Festival, and nominated for an American Academy Award for Best Foreign Film, 1994, this film has a powerful circular narrative that joins three stories about the freedom of love and the pervasiveness of violence. "Words" finds young Macedonian monk Kiril (Colin) distracted from his spiritual duties by young Albanian Zamira (Mitevska), who takes refuge in his monastery. In "Faces," pregnant photo editor Anne (Cartlidge) is torn between her estranged husband and her lover, Aleksander, a London-based war photographer who left his native Macedonia years before. "Pictures" finds Aleksander returning to his old village—now torn by ethnic strife. This film's structure resembles Pulp Fiction, which debuted almost simutaneously. the New York Times' Janet Maslin called it "One of the Best and Most Impassioned Films at this year's Sundance Film Festival." World Policy Journal ranked it in their top ten films of all time that deal with ethnic strife.