Directors let life get the message across

FILM REVIEW

Honeyland

Documentaries with an environmental message often have a hard time connecting with those not already on board; no one likes to be told they’re ruining the planet.

This is just one reason why Honeyland, filmed over a three-year period in a remote corner of North Macedonia, is such a revelation. Co-directors Tamara Kotevska and Ljubomir Stefanov aren’t pushing an agenda; they’re just observing a life.

We are introduced to Hatidze Muratova, a middle-aged woman whose simple life mostly consists of taking care of her 85-yearold mother and tending to her bees. Hatidze keeps a hive on her modest, off-thegrid property, but also knows where the wild bees live up in the hills.

Sticking to her maxim of taking half the honey and leaving the other, she makes regular treks on foot to Skopje, 20 kms away, to sell what she gathers. She spends what she earns on food, a fan for her mom, hair colour. Her world is in balance.

Then a couple moves in, on the land adjacent to hers. They bring seven young children and a herd of cattle; both groups run roughshod over the landscape, and you may find yourself wincing as the kids suffer the occasional kick from a distressed cow. But Hatidze welcomes the newcomers, plays with the kids, and even teaches their father, Hussein, the rudiments of honey production. “Take half, leave half,” she informs him of the first rule of bee-keeping.

You can probably see where this is headed. Hussein wants to make money quickly from his hive, and starts dipping into it more than he should. It doesn’t help that he’s hassled by an impatient would-be buyer. But it also seems to be part of a pattern, as when Hatidze finds him setting fire to the local flora to make room for more pasture. And just where did these itinerant farmers come from? Did they wreck their last homestead?

Honeyland, which avoids narration or any onscreen text beyond subtitles, isn’t saying. It’s the ultimate show-don’t-tell documentary, serving up a tiny slice of human existence on a far corner of the globe. Whether you make a connection to some larger statement about our species is completely up to you.

National Post

Honeyland opens Aug. 2 in Toronto, Aug. 9 in Vancouver, Aug. 17 in Hamilton and Aug. 19 in Waterloo, with other cities to follow.

TRICE FILMS The last female beehunter in Europe must save the bees and return the natural balance in Honeyland.