You can't miss her. Read about our approach to external linking. Today, about 78,000 ethnic Turks still live in North Macedonia, making up just under 4% of the country's population of 2.1 million. The roof still needs some work, but the inside is mostly done. We're a nonprofit (so it's tax-deductible), and reader support makes up about two-thirds of our budget. In an interview, Hatide said she views her work as a means of restoring the ecosystem's balance. 1 movie of 2019. The images in Honeyland are stunning.The film opens with images of a wide mountainous landscape, through which a tiny figure navigates. [62][34] It is also the second Macedonian film to earn an Oscar nomination after Before the Rain (1994). Georgiev said it didn't quite fall so easily from the sky. Gender shouldn't be the topic of discussion. And Hatidze Muratova, one of the hamlets last inhabitants and the star of Honeyland, was still waiting for the filmmakers with a smile and a strong coffee. "When we came to editing, we spent a week or more just being completely stuck. But it's a message which is in danger of being lost in the modern world. It's us but for your ears. 7 New Netflix Shows in October 2022 -- and the Best Reasons to Watch. Sign Up: Stay on top of the latest breaking film and TV news! The woman's name is Hatidze. Hatidze Muratova, the star of the documentary Honeyland, was given a new house by the producers of the double Oscar nominated movie. She and her dying, half-blind mother, Nazife, were the last residents of the abandoned mountain village. The . . Ms.Kotevska withMs. Muratova in her new house. Read full review. [57] Kotevska and Stefanov also started a campaign titled Donate for the Honeyland Community that sends jars of natural honey to donors of a fund that benefits Hatide and her neighbors. He takes all the honey from his own hives, but his bees respond to this by attacking Hatidze's hives, leading to their destruction, and a conflict between the human neighbours. The stylists shared her pictures, saying she is now ready to . In a deserted Macedonian village, Hatidze, a 50-something woman, trudges up a hillside to check her bee colonies nestled in the rocks. We noticed you have an ad blocker on. While translators worked to interpret the Macedonian dialect of Turkish the subjects spoke, Stefanov and Kotevska stitched a visual narrative that made sense and once the translations were added, they were surprised at what they found. Nature filmmaking that focuses only on the environment can feel a little dry, while so-called human-interest storytelling can be cloying; Honeyland succeeds by combining the two. 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 . Directors Tamara Kotevska Ljubomir Stefanov Writers Tamara Kotevska Ljubomir Stefanov Stars Hatidze Muratova Nazife Muratova Hussein Sam But it is also kind of a payback, Mr. Georgiev said. The Oscar race is in full swing, and all eyes are on the big contenders: "Joker"! Campaigns to collect additional funds to support Hatidze are on-going. 2023 BBC. After another year editing, their first feature film was born. The untouched nature of Hatidze's home couldn't be further away from the glitz and glamour of film festivals. [14] Kotevska and Stefanov stated they tried to reflect the traditions of the region, according to which the last daughter has to take care of her parents until they die, prohibiting the daughter from marrying and establishing her own family. 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. Sundance 2023: 17 Films That Could Sell Big Among a Diverse Lineup [31] Rating it with three stars out of four, Michael O'Sullivan from The Washington Post said despite the worthwhile patience it requires from viewers, the film "sneaks up on you in a quiet yet powerful way". "Sharing with bees and with nature is the key to her survival," says Stefanov. Honeyland. The story that unfolds in "Honeyland" is such a perfect parable of our times as we fret over the planet, that the New York Times declared it "the best movie of the year". "Half for me and half for you" is Hatidze's mantra, which she repeats as she tends to the bees on the mountain. Honeyland opens this way: near-wordlessly, attending to the rituals of Hatidze's day, her trips to the nearest city to sell her honey. Georgiev realised they had something way beyond a morality tale about capitalism on their hands. (Her last name, Muratova, is seen in the end credits.) [40] According to the website's critical consensus, "Honeyland uses life in a remote village to offer an eye-opening perspective on experiences that should resonate even for audiences halfway around the world". You can see how unjust life was to her, because shes the greatest extrovert and artist youll ever meet, and yet shes trapped all her life in this abandoned area, and given the burden to take care of her mother, Kotevska said. "Honeyland" is a remarkable documentary, made over the course of three years.It won three awards at the Sundance Film Festival and follows Hatidze as she goes about her life. [9], Honeyland is Tamara Kotevska's and Ljubomir Stefanov's second collaboration on a documentary movie after Lake of Apples (2017). The film depicts how Ms. Muratova and Hussein Sam, a seminomadic farmer tried to coexist in one of the poorest pockets of North Macedonia. 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. When matchmakers were coming, you didnt accept any? she asks her mother. Copyright 2023 Mother Jones and the Foundation for National Progress. [11] The directors decided to collaborate with Foltin on the movie's score because they deemed Foltin original and capable of creating music specifically tailored for the documentary. She will continue to find happiness again and again as long as she lives.". We dont understand Turkish. Subscribe to the Mother Jones Daily to have our top stories delivered directly to your inbox. We see her climb to a beehive that is hidden behind a large rock. "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. The film has already enabled Kotevska and Stefanov to buy Hatidze a house in another village, close to her brother's family. In fact, the social worker felt he had made himself too available. Every time she has a new person coming to her door, she starts singing to them to break the ice. She also sings to the bees, a technique that appears to quell their stings. . A.O. The place is the Republic of North Macedonia, known simply as "Macedonia" until last year when the name was changed to resolve a long-running dispute with the Greeks. jQuery(document).ready(function(){prx("https:\/\/play.prx.org\/e?uf=http%3A%2F%2Ffeeds.feedburner.com%2Fbite-podcast&ge=gid%3A%2F%2Fart19-episode-locator%2FV0%2F_uYi-ThU9eQ57xy7hFwuLPL1rVvIRn7uZxGyUXEW1Jg", "prx-3", "embed")});Listen to the latest episode of Bite: Subscribe using Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Stitcher, or your favorite podcast app. [26], Honeyland was ranked as the third-best documentary and twelfth-best foreign film of 2019 in a survey of over 300 critics around the world conducted by IndieWire. [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". Honeyland is the first film to compete for both the best documentary award and best international feature film. It is well known that male and female bees fill very different roles, but the film shows everybody doing the same jobs. What happened to the mothers face in Honeyland? The documentary Honeyland premiered at the 2019 Sundance Film Festival, where it was the most awarded film, winning the Grand Jury Prize, Special Jury Award for Impact for Change, and the Special Jury Award for Cinematography in the World Cinema Documentary competition. "The Sam family that comes later are the other group of bees who are attacking the previous group of bees, which is Hatidze and her family. John Sloss Is More Hopeful About the Sundance Film Market Than You Might Think, The Oscar Race for Best Picture Has Three Frontrunners as Voting Closes Tuesday, How RRR and Glass Onion Are Trying to Hack the Best Picture Oscar Race, Whered the Color Go? And by all accounts, she is quite happy, according to filmmakers Tamara Kotevska and Ljubomir Stefanov. However, Hussein, the father of the family, wants to harvest honey on a larger scale and for more profit. But they also contain poignant revelations of Hatidzes inner yearnings. In need of money, and inspired by Hatide's way of earning money, Sam takes an interest in wild beekeeping himself. The honey she sells at the market in the capital of North Macedonia, Skopje, is her sole source of income. Honeyland focuses on Hatidze Muratova, a beekeeper from the Macedonian village of Bekirlija, and her traditional, environmental-friendly practices to sell the honey that she gathers from her bees. [52] It also appeared on twenty-three critics' year-end top-ten lists, ranking first in three of them. Her story is featured in "Honeyland," the first film ever to be nominated at the Oscars for both best documentary and best foreign language movie. Atanas Georgiev, left, the producer of Honeyland, and Tamara Kotevska, center left, one of the two co-directors, with Hussein Sam, his wife, Ljutvie, and their children inDorfulija, North Macedonia. But it has still connected with a worldwide audience through the protagonists' body language, relationships and emotions. They slept in tents and hammocks in front of Hatide's house. Log in to Reply. By signing up, you agree to our privacy policy and terms of use, and to receive messages from Mother Jones and our partners. 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. The atmosphere in the village changes when the nomadic rancher Hussein Sam arrives with his wife Ljutvie, their seven children, and their imported domestic animals. Related She lives with her mother and is her care-taker, although . Usually you dont interfere with your protagonists but as soon as we realized Honeyland would be very successful, we thought we had to do something.. One of the more unlikely films competing in this weekend's Oscars is a fascinating story about a wild beekeeper in the Balkans. 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. Kotevska and Stefanov's camera captures the duo's nighttime bickering with remarkable intimacy, as. We are now very trained to see the stories that are created visually.". . Our fearless leader, Hatidze, climbs higher and higher until she stops at an unremarkable collection of rocks. "The love that she was keeping for a family of her own, that never came true, eventually went to the bees," says Kotevska. Kotevska says there were many other disadvantages from the beginning of the shooting but most of them ended up working out well. In the end we came up with the best possible solution and that's to edit on mute. Mr. Sam has a more haphazard way with his cows, viewing them almost as antagonists. Life was hard but peaceful in this forgotten corner of the Balkans. 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. [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. Back at her homestead, Hatidze tends to her handmade hives and her bedridden mother, occasionally heading to the capital to market her wares. Nevertheless she still spends the bee season in her old village. [47] Ed Potton of The Times, who gave the film four stars out of five, said "[a]lthough it starts as a meditation on the hardship and rhythms of rural life, [the film] becomes something more intimate". Who was Ukrainian minister Denys Monastyrsky? And Hatidze Muratova, one of the hamlet's last inhabitants and the star of " Honeyland ," was still waiting for the. Hatidze Muratova, the protagonist of "Honeyland. Those with more knowledge than I have of beekeeping may appreciate the details better, but the extra hardships that come to . [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. All pictures from Honeyland (directors: Tamara Kotevska and Ljubo Stefanov) are NEON copyright, unless otherwise stated, From World of Warcraft to conducting the Oscars, Ukrainian ministers killed in helicopter crash, Zelensky addresses world leaders after deadly helicopter crash, 15 minutes to defend yourself against death penalty. [15] The film was going to focus on Hatide's relationship with her mother and the directors had no conflict planned until the nomad family arrived sometime later. 2023 Copyright France 24 - All rights reserved. Their conversations, which take place in the dark, cave-like interior of their home, are often quite funnythe daily bickering of two aging women. Hatide scolds Sam for ignoring her advice and her bee colony collapses. Hatidze lives with her ailing mother in the mountains of Macedonia, making a living cultivating honey using ancient beekeeping traditions. She does not get stung, the bees seem to trust her. Honeyland. She has become a star. From the start, Georgiev said they were very aware about their responsibilities to their subjects and the eco-system -- both natural and human -- that they come from. [32] The documentary's producer Atanas Georgiev said the production team was "very eager" to send the message of sustainability to the citizens and the government of North Macedonia, and to prompt action to improve the country's air quality and reduce pollution.[33]. [37] In the United Kingdom, Honeyland was released by Dogwoof on 13 September 2019,[38] which was followed by a wider release in most European countries the same month. Hatidze says her bees are uniquely resilient and can survive very high and very low temperature, unlike many other species. Interviews with leading film and TV creators about their process and craft. 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. "Marriage . Sign up for the free Mother Jones Daily newsletter and follow the news that matters. Hatidze makes a living using ancient beekeeping traditions. And even with her newfound fame, Ms. Muratova said she still remained true to her vocation. Hatide instructs him on collecting honey and provides him with several bees so Sam can start his own colony. But we decided to break that rule, said Atanas Georgiev, the films producer. If Id had a son like you, she later tells one of the neighbor boys, things would be different.. The surprise hit at Sundance, where it won three awards, including the World Cinema Documentary Grand Prize, Honeyland is a visually stunning human portrait that has something sweet for everyone. The film shows that to be true of the people living in the region too. Its distributor Neon gave it a theatrical release in the United States, opening on 26 July 2019. Tamara Kotevska . 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. France 24 - International breaking news, top stories and headlines. This Article is related to: Film and tagged Honeyland, International Documentary Association, Sundance. Directors Tamara Kotevska, Ljubomir Stefanov Starring Hatidze Muratova, Nazife Muratova, Hussein Sam Genres Drama, Documentary, Special Interest Subtitles None available All Rights Reserved. Hatidze spent her time caring for both her bees and her mother, and with no spouse or children of her own, took some of the neighbor kids under her wing. [20] The production involved a crew of six: the two directors, two directors of photography, an editor, and a sound engineer. In a simpler world, Mr. Georgiev, Mr. Stefanov and his co-director, Tamara Kotevska, would be basking in their newfound success, and focusing on new projects. She stated that the movie was too fictionalized to be regarded as a documentary and claimed it was "a bona fide Flahertian re-enacted documentary. The documentary received numerous awards and nominations at film festivals, including three awards at the 2019 Sundance Film Festival and two nominations at the 92nd Academy Awards in the categories for Best International Feature Film and Best Documentary Feature. It's a poem including history"[19] and listed the film as best pick for 2019. It portrays the life of Hatide Muratova, a loner beekeeper of wild bees who lives in the remote mountain village of Bekirlija and follows her lifestyle before and after neighbors move in nearby. Hatidze Muratova in "Honeyland." (Neon) But "Honeyland" is not a fictional story about a good woman and an evil man; Hussein Sam's a desperate mannine mouths to feed is a massive . But Hatidze was longing for her own family. Because the crew couldn't understand the old Ottoman Turkish dialect she spoke to her mother, Georgiev did the first rough edit on mute. 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. Honeyland introduces us to Hatidze Muratova, a woman in her 50s who harvests honey from her own beehives in the mountains of Macedonia. [19] Due to the remoteness of Bekirlija, the production team stayed there for three-to-four consecutive days before going to nearby towns for supplies and to recharge their filming equipment. Hatidze Muratova. 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