Powerful Movie

I just finished watching the 1994 film, Before The Rain. It's very powerful, set in Macedonia (ex-Yugoslavia) in the recent past. Where once there was law & order, a blood feud has erupted between Muslim and Christian neighbours. Much like the famous Hatfield & McCoy feud, a never-ending murder spree has begun, with absolutely no end in sight. In the film, at least, it got so bad that cousins started killing cousins if the latter tried to stop the revenge.
What struck me most were three things:

• This situation happened in the recent past and is still ongoing today.
  
• This is happening not in some far-off place but right beside Greece and Italy.
  
• These people appear to be just like you & me. Their culture and lifestyles don't seem to be very different than ours.

But yet, murder & death are a regular occurrence for them but not for us. Several questions come to mind: How did things go so wrong there? Are we impossibly different from them? What separates our society from falling into a similar quagmire?

A powerful film, but I suddenly feel far less comfortable in my familiar surroundings.