[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". It also made Ms. Muratova perhaps the worlds most famous beekeeper. [58], Honeyland was the most awarded movie at the 2019 Sundance Movie Festival, winning awards in three categories, including the Grand Jury Prize, the Special Jury Award for Impact for Change, and the Special Jury Award for Cinematography, all in the World Cinema Documentary Competition category. "Marriage . In fact it was the other way round. 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. For more information about the series, and a complete schedule, visit IDA. Can you pitch in a few bucks to help fund Mother Jones' investigative journalism? I wondered why someone would agree to bare herself on camera this way. Hatidze Muratova,a beekeeper and the star of Honeyland, at her home in the remote mountain village of Bekirlija in North Macedonia. Sign up for our Email Newsletters here. Their conversations, which take place in the dark, cave-like interior of their home, are often quite funnythe daily bickering of two aging women. As the nomadic family decides to move to another village, Hatide remains alone in Bekirlija. Honeyland has much to say about conserving nature, but its lessons are also about human life and relationships. Films selected for the Series receive exclusive access to an audience of tastemakers and doc lovers during the important Awards campaigning season from September through November. [25][26] The camerawork, which is steady during the first half of the movie, later becomes less steady with the arrival of the nomadic neighbors. 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 . [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. We have no option but to cope with it somehow," said Georgiev, who also edited the film. She hikes along a mountain ridge, prying a small, flat slab from the. 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. The directors say that wild beekeeping was something that only a few people in the region learned how to do. 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 . The BBC is not responsible for the content of external sites. HONEYLAND. "Everyone has to do the same work to survive. And now, as Hollywood movie stars are tweeting their support for the artistic movie, pictures of her new house were released. 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. This becomes clear in Honeyland, an exquisitely photographed documentary by Macedonian filmmakers Ljubomir Stefanov and Tamara Kotevska. [14] They spent the better course of three years visiting the families of the film. In Honeyland, Hatidze's echo of paradise is most certainly lost. That scene where she's taking the honey, she's saying, "Half for me and half for you." That was . Hatidze gets very close to the bees, often using no protection. Honeyland (directed by Tamara Kotevska and Ljubomir Stefanov) is a documentary film that follows the life of a beekeeper, Hatidze Muratova, who lives with her elderly mother in an otherwise abandoned village in rural Macedonia. Calm and gentle, Ms. Muratova has a deep and respectful relationship with nature, treating her bees almost as collaborators. [27], After the film, the filmmakers bought Hatide a house close to her brother's family, although she still spends bee season in her old village. Hatide instructs him on collecting honey and provides him with several bees so Sam can start his own colony. At her old home in Bekirlija, she proudly unveiled her latest bowl of liquid honey. She has become a star. 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. Complicating matters: They didn't speak Turkish, the preferred language of the film's main subjects both Hatidze and her new neighbors who moved in a few months into the shoot and disrupted her. "Hatidze acts with the bees as if they were her family and she takes care of them as if they were her children," says Kotevska. [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". Who was Ukrainian minister Denys Monastyrsky? [28] They also set up a donation page supporting Hatide and the Sam kids on the film's website. She does not get stung, the bees seem to trust her. . Hatidze generously imparts her methods to him but, pressured by money-grubbing marketeers, he disregards the half-for-them-half-for-us rule and wreaks havoc on the region's beekeeping . You can't miss her. In one scene of the film, Hatidze asks her mother why she turned down offers of marriage that were brought for Hatidze. [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. And this is how we came to it. And by all accounts, she is quite happy, according to filmmakers Tamara Kotevska and Ljubomir Stefanov. what happened to Hatidze might be easier to understand, because they . Read about our approach to external linking. 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. It really says something important about the world," he added. The film chronicles the tensions betweenHatidze Muratova, a local beekeeper, and a farmer in the remote hamlet of Bekirlija. (Her last name, Muratova, is seen in the end credits.) Then there was a legal battle over an incident that predated the film, in which Ms. Muratova was attacked by Mr. Sams dogs. Its impossible! sighed Mr. Georgiev. Agence France-presse / February 6, 2020 Deep within the Balkans, Hatidze Muratova is the last in a long line of Macedonian wild beekeepers. For more information about the series, and a complete schedule, visit IDA. [52] It also appeared on twenty-three critics' year-end top-ten lists, ranking first in three of them. She is an incredible woman, a natural optimist. Indeed, the contrast could not be more stark to Hatidze's solitary life in Bekirlija, where she tends her hives of wild bees, only ever taking half the honey so the bees would always have their due. But he thinks there was other magic also at work from her late mother, the "queen bee" of the piece. The shoot lasted three years, with co-directors Tamara Kotevska and Ljubomir Stefanov camping in the village with their cameramen until their batteries would run out -- since there was no electricity for miles. Hatidze Muratova is a Macedonian beekeeper of Turkish ethnicity: Outside, she sings to the bees that she tends with an expert, traditional hand. 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 . She wanted to live in the nearby village so she could still tend to her bees and have a warm place to live during the winter. First we spent three and a half months, four months, just watching the material, the whole material. Gently placing it into Nazife's hands, the old woman's ruined face (one eye has been destroyed by a wound or infection . Its an avalanche of issues, said Julijana Daskalov, the foundations program manager. Honeyland. Directors Tamara Kotevska, Ljubomir Stefanov Starring Hatidze Muratova, Nazife Muratova, Hussein Sam Genres Drama, Documentary, Special Interest Subtitles None available But the Honeyland directors, together with two cameramen, spent three years, on and off, visiting these families. 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. Get The Latest IndieWire Alerts And Newsletters Delivered Directly To Your Inbox. She lives with her mother and is her care-taker, although . The stylists shared her pictures, saying she is now ready to . "Sharing with bees and with nature is the key to her survival," says Stefanov. It took filmmakers Tamara Kotevska and Ljubo Stefanov three years of filming in the remote countryside of Macedonia to capture the footage they used in their Sundance-winning documentary, Honeyland, about Hatidze Muratova, a rural Macedonian woman who has dedicated her life to beekeeping. She has survived for more than 50 years in the ruins of an abandoned village with no electricity or indoor plumbing, eking out her existence by journeying to the closest city to trade the honey for medicine and fruit. As observers, should they ever help their subjects? "Honeyland" introduces us to Hatidze Muratova, a great character and a natural-born movie star. VideoChess gets a risqu makeover, The Nigerian influencers paid to manipulate your vote, How a baffling census delay is hurting Indians, How Mafia boss was caught at a clinic after 30 years. Honeyland, an Oscar contender for both best documentary feature and best international feature, may first appear to be concerned with wild beekeeping in the small, landlocked Republic of North Macedonia. Honeyland documents the life of Hatide Muratova, a Macedonian beekeeper of Turkish descent, who lives in the village of Bekirlija in the municipality of Lozovo. Honeyland follows the day-to-day life of Hatidze Muratova, one of the last "bee-hunters", as she cultivates honey from the mountains of Macedonia. Today, reader support makes up about two-thirds of our budget, allows us to dig deep on stories that matter, and lets us keep our reporting free for everyone. If Id had a son like you, she later tells one of the neighbor boys, things would be different.. But we were surprised [by] some of those strong sentences we heard. Kotevska says that many people assume that she, as a woman, was the one who was closer to Hatidze, and Stefanov with the boys from the other family. Tamara Kotevska . Hatidze Muratova, a 50-something woman, is . "It's important who we were as people, our personalities, this was crucial. The film was shot on a shoestring budget, but grossed a little over $1 million, and turned its makers into darlings of the documentary circuit. Despite his initial success, one of Sam's customers demands more honey than his bees can produce. In need of money, and inspired by Hatide's way of earning money, Sam takes an interest in wild beekeeping himself. "[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". The HONEYLAND story began long before humans ever lived in the region, but our narrative starts with its last two remaining inhabitants: Hatidze and her mother Nazife. That is until their nomadic neighbours, Hussein and Ljutvie Sam, moved in with their unruly herd of children, cows and chickens. Honeyland. "People love her. That was largely thanks to Mr. Stefanov and his fellow filmmakers. 2023 BBC. We stuck to our promise and we followed them as unobtrusively as possible for 3 years. "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 they were struck by how similar Hatidze was to a worker bee and how her mother resembled the queen bee. "I think she put a spell on us all, so that we would look after her daughter when she was gone," he said. [56] Money received from the award was used to purchase a new house for Hatide in the nearby village of Dorfulija in Lozovo Municipality, close to her relatives and friends. But the similarities between people and bees do not stop there. Having lived 56 years quite happily without television, Hatidze wasn't all that aware of "Sex and the City", although she graciously told the star-struck actress's fortune "by reading the coffee grains in bottom of her cup.". And I can feel that she feels that this is not her only home.. The documentary also portrays Hatide's relationships with her bedridden mother and her neighbors. The story revolves around Hatidze, the last wild beekeeper, and her life philosophy on the exploitation of the natural resources. . [21] Each of the directors focused on a different element of the narrative; Kotevska's main role was the portrayal of relationships while Stefanov captured the environmental aspects. Inside the house, the taps were dry, so Mr. Georgiev called the mayor to reconnect the water. But we decided to break that rule, said Atanas Georgiev, the films producer. This gave us the power of the visual story that we made. They noticed beehives behind a rock on the mountain where they were filming. But it's a message which is in danger of being lost in the modern world. And, like the jobs in the village of Bekirlija, the making of the film was shared between Stefanov and Kotevska, who is one of only a handful of female directors to be nominated for an Oscar this year. This led them to Hatidze Muratova, one of Europe's last wild beekeepers, who uses ancient methods passed down through the generations for harvesting wild honey. Hatidze makes a living using ancient beekeeping traditions. Honeyland is the story of Hatidze, a lone rural beekeeper in the spectacular, almost unpopulated Macedonian mountain countryside. But they also contain poignant revelations of Hatidzes inner yearnings. 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". For the film crew, said Ms. Muratova, it was more demanding to deal with us after the film than during the filming itself.. And even with her newfound fame, Ms. Muratova said she still remained true to her vocation. "People love her. Hyperallergic speaks to the directors of the first film nominated for both the Best Documentary . And then she said that this is something she was thinking of a lot how to find a way to tell her story to the world. 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. The film depicts how Ms. Muratova and Hussein Sam, a seminomadic farmer tried to coexist in one of the poorest pockets of North Macedonia. 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. '' says Stefanov at work from her late mother, the bees seem to trust her, a natural.! With her bedridden mother and her neighbors stuck to our promise and we them... You pitch in a few people in the end credits. small, flat slab the. 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