‘THE CAVE’
Few fictional dramas can boast a hero as intrepid or personable as Amani Ballor. She leads a team of physicians in a makeshift underground hospital in Eastern Ghouta — nicknamed “The Cave” — while Russian bombs shatter what’s left of the Syrian city above and often wreak havoc below. Dr. Amani, as she’s called, doggedly perseveres with humor and steely nerves against harrowing odds, captured with visceral immediacy by a fearless team of cinematographers.
Yet the film explores an even more complicated mission. “It’s the story of a woman trying to treat society,” said director Feras Fayyad. “Not just save lives but also change the society from deeply, deeply inside.”
“The Cave,” released by National Geographic Documentary Films, won audience prizes at the Toronto International Film Festival and the Camden International Film Festival, and follows 2017’s “Last Men in Aleppo,” an Oscarnominated film about the White Helmet rescue workers in the Syrian Civil War, which Fayyad co-directed. (“For Sama,” another remarkable Syrian film, set in a bomb-plagued hospital in Aleppo, is likewise a contender for the academy’s documentary shortlist, having won the top prize for nonfiction film at the Cannes Film Festival.)
Amani’s struggles with her society’s ingrained sexism, and those who criticize her leadership because she is a woman, were of great concern to the filmmaker. “The movie connects to me personally,” said Fayyad, who says he grew up in a family with many sisters and a strong mother. The film is made with them in mind, “but also a picture for all the women in my society.”
Shot with an exquisite eye over four years of off-and-on treks to a remote part of central Macedonia, “Honeyland” tells the story of Hatidze, a 50-something beekeeper who cares for her invalid mother and tends with loving care to her harmonious relationship with the bees she cultivates. The arrival of a nomadic Turkish family shakes up this delicate balance with nature, as the boisterous new neighbors have needs of their own.
“In documentary filmmaking you never know when the magic will happen,” said Tamara Kotevska, who co-directed the film with Ljubomir Stefanov, capturing 400 hours of footage that was shaped into a feature-length narrative, which will be submitted as Macedonia's international film Oscar contender. “They’re a huge part of her life and the best possible conflict in the story. We stayed for so long they accepted us as part of their reality.”
The Macedonian filmmakers, whose work won multiple prizes at the Sundance Film Festival, endured unusual rigors during the production, and a full range of risks and annoyances, whether it was the fleas that assaulted Kotevska or the wolves that prowled the craggy landscape. There also was a language barrier, as some of their
subjects spoke an “old Turkish hardly understandable even for Turkish people.” Stefanov said. Working with translators, the filmmakers discovered they didn’t need to make many changes. “I was amazed by some of the dialogue we had already used without knowing what was there.”