Soon after, her mother dies. Read full review. Production with obstacles. When Hatidze went for a dress fitting for the Oscars in the North Macedonian capital Skopje, it took "20 minutes for her to walk 200 metres because so many people wanted to have a selfie with. While working on a short video commissioned by a nature conservancy project, the filmmakers met Hatidze Muratova, a middle-aged woman who ekes out a hardscrabble and solitary existence harvesting honey with ancient, sustainable methods across the craggy mountainous landscape of the former Yugoslav republic while caring for her half-blind and bedridden mother in a modest home without . 'Honeyland' is a pretty sweet documentary about a woman and her bees | Movie review Like many a good documentary, Honeyland takes us to a faraway land and culture in a way that reveals what is distinctive and what is universal about people. Honeyland has a strong ecological message, but it's the life story of the woman at the centre of the film that has struck a chord around the world. It was amazing," he said. Finance came from a $25,000 grant awarded by San Francisco International Film Festival's documentary fund and three million Macedonian denars awarded by North Macedonia Film Agency. And the complexities of this transition created a clash between the filmmakers professional duties as cleareyed observers and their subjects emotional expectations of them as humans and friends. happened upon a pivotal conflict that would alter Hatidze's life: the arrival of a nomadic family of nine who settled nearby with a few hundred cattle and a fierce determination to make a living. Hatidze Muratova's grandfather taught her to harvest honey using ancient beekeeping traditions. In the film, relations between Ms. Muratova and Mr. Sam were bad; Mr. Sam ignored Ms. Muratovas advice about how to start his own bee colony, leading his bees to attack hers and ruining Ms. Muratovas entire livelihood. [23], Set in the context of global warming and the rise of contemporary environmental awareness, numerous critics emphasized the message of sustainability. hours of footage, honeyland centers on hatidze, a woman in her mid-fifties (we learn she was born in 1964) who sustains herself and her elderly, infirm mother with her honey business, keeping rows and rows of bees on their small plot in a rural (and apparently otherwise abandoned) town a four-hour walk from the city One day, an . Directors Tamara Kotevska and Ljubomir Stefanov are expected to attend all screenings. For the film crew, said Ms. Muratova, it was more demanding to deal with us after the film than during the filming itself.. July 26, 2019 11:07 pm. And bees do fill the filmflitting in and out of the frame, stinging hapless neighbors, and alchemizing the harsh landscape into molten gold. "The love that she was keeping for a family of her own, that never came true, eventually went to the bees," says Kotevska. So we can probably say that the bees brought us to her.. What happened to the mothers face in Honeyland? Sucked into the dispute, the crew tried to stay neutral by providing legal assistance to both parties, and they mediated an agreement by which Ms. Muratova would withdraw her complaint in exchange for Mr. Sams promise to abide by a set of principles about his future behavior. The arrival of a nomadic familytrailer, shabby cattle, kittens, and a litter of children in towshatters Hatidzes serene world, and that tension sets the dramatic stakes of the film. [16] Hatide and the nomad family were camera-shy at first but became used to the process as filming progressed. She has been making a living by farming honey and selling it in the closest city for her whole life, following one simple, but crucial rule - take half the honey and leave the other half to the bees. The IDA Documentary Screening Series brings some of the years most acclaimed documentary films to the IDA community and members of industry guilds and organizations. [14] They spent the better course of three years visiting the families of the film. [46] Writing for The Hollywood Reporter, Sheri Linden called it an "unforgettable vrit character study and an intimate look at an endangered tradition". But we decided to break that rule, said Atanas Georgiev, the films producer. Their avarice, and the events that soon unfold, haveled many critics to praise the film as an allegory for the modern worlds impact on our most fragile ecosystems. [22] David Ehlrich writing for IndieWire gave the film a B+ in his review, calling it "a bitter and mesmerically beautiful documentary that focuses on a single beekeeper as though our collective future hinges on the fragile relationship between her and the hives". But it's a message which is in danger of being lost in the modern world. Our fearless leader, Hatidze, climbs higher and higher until she stops at an unremarkable collection of rocks. Can you pitch in a few bucks to help fund Mother Jones' investigative journalism? She will be the only Turkish-Macedonian peasant in the starry audience at the Dolby Theatre in Hollywood. We were tasked to produce a short documentary about the area, built around an environmental topic. [40] At Metacritic, which assigns a normalized rating out of 100 to reviews from mainstream publications, the film received an average score of 86 based on 26 reviews, indicating "universal acclaim". We see her climb to a beehive that is hidden behind a large rock. But her quiet existence is fundamentally changed when the nomadic Sam family, consisting of parents with seven unruly children, a noisy vehicle and a large herd of cattle, moves into the village. Kotevska says there were many other disadvantages from the beginning of the shooting but most of them ended up working out well. She now divides her time between the two villages. [30] Los Angeles Times journalist Justin Chang described it as one of the rare films that serve as an "intimately infuriating, methodically detailed allegory of the earth's wonders being ravaged by the consequences of human greed". She takes only half of the honey, leaving the rest for the bees. WEB_1080P . Copyright 2023 Mother Jones and the Foundation for National Progress. In the film, Nazife never leaves the house, but her wisdom guides her daughter at the time of crisis. [61], On 13 January 2020, Honeyland received nominations in the categories for Best Documentary Feature and Best International Feature Film at the 92nd Academy Awards; it was the first documentary in the history of the Oscars to receive a nomination in the both categories. Hatidze makes a living using ancient beekeeping traditions. This Article is related to: Film and tagged Honeyland, International Documentary Association, Sundance. To lessen the pressure on himself in refereeing the relationship, Mr. Georgiev created a foundation that works with the families independently of the crew. . Here, she lives alone with her mother, putting in all her time and energy to make sure they live happily and peacefully. Hatidze Muratova lives in a remote area of Macedonia and has one simple rule: When you harvest honey, you take half and leave the other half for the bees. [20] She elaborated that Sam's initial hesitation to sell more honey than he could produce comes from the conflict between his moral values and "the pressures of society". he, out of greed, breaks Honeyland's basic rule (take half of the honey, but leave half to the bees); she, the last female beehunter in Europe, is left to save the bees and restore natural . We were very shocked to see this because it was obviously handmade, said Kotevska, and we started asking the locals around who they belonged to, who made them, and why. [28] They also set up a donation page supporting Hatide and the Sam kids on the film's website. But it has still connected with a worldwide audience through the protagonists' body language, relationships and emotions. This is how we found our protagonist. Guests Expected. Honeyland chronicles a period of Hatidze's life when her ancient methods of beekeeping came up against, and conflicted with, those of a newcomer to her remote home region. [36] In North Macedonia, the film had its premiere at the MakeDox Festival in Kurumli An on 28 August 2019, which was attended by the film crew and Hatide, and included a concert by Foltin. We spotted Hatidze in the very beginning and just started shooting her. When Hatidze went for a dress fitting for the Oscars in the North Macedonian capital Skopje, it took "20 minutes for her to walk 200 metres because so many people wanted to have a selfie with her," Georgiev revealed. Due to its location in a secluded mountain, the village has no access to electricity and running water. "It's important who we were as people, our personalities, this was crucial. Will They Ever Leave? If Id had a son like you, she later tells one of the neighbor boys, things would be different.. [17] Stefanov said, "The point is to take as much as you need, not to take everything, and leave [something] for tomorrow and those who are providing for you". Given her exceptionally poor living conditions in the nearly deserted hamlet of Bekirlija, Hatidze would often say that her main wish, out of her newfound fame, is to move to a better house in the near-by village of Dorfulija which offers far better living standards. However, after learning about Hatidze from their time spent in the local area, this plan soon developed into a three year stay documenting Hatdidze's unique way of life and her interaction with those . "[50] Sheena Scott from Forbes shared Sims's sentiments, writing that "it is the moments of intimacy that make this film so unique and beautiful". We noticed you have an ad blocker on. [48] Rating it with four stars out of five, Helen O'Hara of Empire magazine, summed up the film as "[s]tunningly beautiful and quietly powerful, this is a portrait of a vanishing way of life and of a determined woman who's just trying to make her way in the world". However, Hussein, the father of the family, wants to harvest honey on a larger scale and for more profit. But Ms. Muratovas cramped, dark living room, site of the movies most moving scene, no longer felt lived in. And I can feel that she feels that this is not her only home.. You havent been calling, Mr. Sam said. The 225 Best Horror Movies of All Time Yet Mr. Georgiev has been anything but absent. [31] Sheena Scott, writing for Forbes, said Sam's actions were motivated by profit "to the detriment of a more suitable sustainable way of living". "We were doing it by instinct, and then as soon as we got the translations the plot was all there. Just as worker bees spend their entire lives taking care of the queen bee which never leaves the hive, Hatidze has committed her own life to the care of her blind and paralyzed . So she was very happy to participate in this. Log in to Reply. Using prize money won by the film, he and his colleagues had found her a new house in Dorfulija, a larger and wealthier village about half an hours drive away. It was very surprising because we didnt change what we put on the line. The situation depicted in Honeyland is one in which the inept neighbours arriving with their cattle soon add beekeeping to their livelihood but do so in ways that put profits first and come to threaten Hatidze's bees. Life is not an infinite process it has phases, he said. Hatidze lives with her ailing mother in the mountains of Macedonia, making a living cultivating honey using ancient beekeeping traditions. "To be able to communicate with bees you need to have a personal strength to approach them, patience to learn how to tame them, and this way of life requires not force but wisdom," says Kotevska. It really says something important about the world," he added. [9], Honeyland is Tamara Kotevska's and Ljubomir Stefanov's second collaboration on a documentary movie after Lake of Apples (2017). But the documentary doesnt teach us much about cultivating honey. [20][35] The finished film includes six of the twenty-five scenes portraying the relationship between the two. In fact, the social worker felt he had made himself too available. Honeyland is a film set in a remote land, where the people live in ways unfamiliar in the West. "And through that, even though her life is very harsh, Hatidze doesn't feel lonely.". Complicating matters: They didnt speak Turkish, the preferred language of the films main subjects both Hatidze and her new neighbors who moved in a few months into the shoot and disrupted her way of life. . According to Kotevska, they wanted to make sure the movie's narrative is completely understandable even if it is followed visually. Hatidze says her bees are uniquely resilient and can survive very high and very low temperature, unlike many other species. But under pressure to produce more from a local merchant, he breaks Hatidze's golden rule of leaving half for the bees, with disastrous consequences for everyone. Film Crew Spent 3 Years in Remote Balkan Hamlet. When an unruly family moves in next door, what at first seems like a balm for her solitude becomes a source of tension as they, too, want to practice beekeeping, while disregarding her advice. She's wickedly funny but sweet: When a market vendor hears how she devotes her life to caring for her mother Nazife, he gives her a fan decorated with a peacock's tail. Hyperallergic speaks to the directors of the first film nominated for both the Best Documentary . Inside the house, the taps were dry, so Mr. Georgiev called the mayor to reconnect the water. Who was Ukrainian minister Denys Monastyrsky? [41] A.O. When the rules are broken, everyone pays the price. [39] As of July 2021, Honeyland has grossed $815,082 in the US and Canada, and $499,955 in other territories, making a worldwide gross of $1,315,037. [25], The film's score was composed and performed by the Macedonian band Foltin under the musical supervision of Rana Eid from the production company DB Studios in Beirut, Lebanon. The film shows that to be true of the people living in the region too. [63] Matilda Coleman of The New York Times dubbed the movie an "Oscar game changer" and stated with its two nominations, it paved the way for more success of the documentary genre in future Academy Award nominations. Ms. Muratova had lost her new house key, so the producer had to find the workman with the spare. And very happy to tell her story and her life to the world.. 7 New Netflix Shows in October 2022 -- and the Best Reasons to Watch. The directors say the film profoundly changed their lives. But there was big pressure from the public in Macedonia" for her to go to the Oscars. 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