Honeyland (Медена земја, 2019, 89 min.)

Directors: Tamara Kotevska, Ljubomir Stefanov

Cinematography: Samir Ljuma, Fejmi Daut

Film editing: Atanas Georgiev

Music: Foltin

Twenty five years after the nomination in the Best Foreign Film category for Milčo Mančevski's Before the Rain, one Macedonian film was an Oscar candidate in two categories - Best Documentary (Feature) and Best International Feature Film. Honeyland announced an international campaign with the triumph at Sundance in 2019, but no one expected such an incredible success. It also became a precedent - for the first time a documentary was nominated in more than one category. What did the world see and recognize in the story of Hatidje Muratova, the last wild bee breeder in Europe?

Primarily a deeply human and cruel story of survival in a world unknown to us today, but also a story of human nature, greed and disturbing the natural balance through the conflict of two different ways of using natural resources and the inability to preserve the world for generations to come. It is an atypical documentary in which there is no clear line between reality and fiction (although today we can rarely talk about a "pure" documentary). This takes into account not only the text, but also the cultural context, as well as that of the recipient. The division does not depend so much on the dietary level as on the metacommunication codes. Yet the universal ecological message, without any special geographical determinant and landscape that can be anywhere on the planet, is what makes Honeyland an exceptional achievement.

Hatidje lives with her sick and half-blind mother Nazife, a dog and cats home in the abandoned village of Bekirlija, in the central part of the country. There are no roads among the destroyed stone houses, the world is far developed when there is no electricity and water. The protagonists are the last inhabitants of the former village, which was mostly inhabited by Yuruks, a semi-nomadic Turkish ethnic subgroup. She makes honey which is their only source of income. When she gets enough honey she goes to town, sells it, and buys groceries for her mother and herself. It is a depiction of life in keeping with the Yuruk tradition: the last daughter is expected to take care of her parents; she cannot marry and have a family of her own while the parents are still alive.

Her simple philosophy of life is based on sharing and coexistence with nature - "half for me, half for the bees". This seemingly stable microcosm with unique bee buzzing sounds and her invocation “mat, mat, mat” will be disrupted by the arrival of the nomadic family of Hussein and Ljutvie Sam with seven children, a trailer and a herd of cows. This is where the conflict arises as the initiator of the story - Hatidje is facing a serious challenge when it comes to rescuing the bees and preserving their natural balance. The desire for quick profits, the struggle to feed the family, and pressure from the honey buyer forces Hussein to break the key rule of taking only half of the honey, and this results in the complete collapse of his hives. When one breaks the rule, everyone pays the price. What is currently happening in the world with the COVID-19 pandemic is precisely because of the breaking the rules.

The authors Tamara Kotevska and Ljubomir Stefanov have emphasized several times that the story came about quite by accident because they were originally supposed to make a short documentary on the biodiversity of the Bregalnica River. Through the local population, they heard about the fascinating Hatidje. After three years of filming and almost four hundred hours of material, we got a wonderful film about woman and nature, as well as a portrait and a deeply human story, an anthropological study and a personal point of view. The message is clear. We will not survive in a world hungry for profit. We will witness our own destruction.

You can watch Honeyland on Amazon or Hulu.