U.S. Release
Goodbye, 20th Century! was Macedonia's submission to the 71st Academy Awards for the Academy Award for Best Foreign Language Film, but was not among the five finalists to achieve the Oscar nomination.
The film had its U.S. premiere at 1999 Cinequest Film Festival in San Jose, California. The same year, it played in the first annual B-Movie Film Festival in Syracuse, New York, where it won awards for Best Editing and Best Set Design.
Goodbye, 20th Century! had a brief theatrical release later in 1999, where it received mixed reviews. Dennis Harvey, writing for Variety, stated "the film's pacing is uneven, tone and intent often unclear, but the visually stylish Goodbye, 20th Century! is memorable for sheer idiosyncrasy alone." Robert Firsching, reviewing the film for the Amazing World of Cult Movies, praised the film as "an impressionistic howl of rage and despair from a country which has lived on the brink of war for years, a nightmare without beginning or end. One gets the feeling that it has driven everyone concerned a bit mad, and that is where Goodbye 20th Century! succeeds the most: without showing a single glimpse of actual Balkan fighting, it portrays the horror and insanity of the conflict in a way that a mere war film would be hard-pressed to achieve."
However, MaryAnn Johanson, writing for The Flick Filosopher, said the film "feels like it was made by a couple of precocious 13-year-old boys obsessed with incest and bullets and splattering blood. This is strictly for those who like their science fiction with a lot of style but very little substance." And James Berardinelli, writing for Reel Views, complained that "Popovski and Mitrevski seem to relish making their movie as off-the-wall as possible, and, while the result may grant them satisfaction, it is likely to have the opposite effect on those who find themselves in a theater watching the final product."
Goodbye 20th Century! was released in the U.S. on VHS video, but to date there has been no DVD release.
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