Love and war divide two brothers in a drama from award-winning director Milcho Manchevski, his first since his acclaimed 1994 debut Pred Dozhdot. After an elderly woman (
Rosemary Murphy) gets the better of a burglar (
Adrian Lester) who has broken into her apartment, she decides to tell him a story about her family to give him a perspective on an individual's legacy to their family. Luke (
David Wenham) and Elijah (
Joseph Fiennes) are brothers and cowboys in the American West near the turn of the century. Luke and Elijah are both in love with Lilith (Anne Brochet), a woman who works in an upscale brothel, and when Elijah marries her, it puts a permanent rift in his relationship with his brother. Luke leaves the country and travels to Macedonia, where he becomes involved with a group of resistance fighters who are trying to topple Turkish occupation of their land; a skilled gunman, Luke soon becomes a valuable member of the Macedonian nationalist forces, and falls in love with Neda (Nikolina Kujac), a woman fighting alongside the loyalists. However, Luke discovers he can't entirely leave his past behind when he discovers Elijah has become a hired gun who has joined the Turkish forces. Dust was the opening night attraction at the 2001 Venice Film Festival. ~ Mark Deming, All Movie Guide