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] Josh Kupecki from the Austin Chronicle said Honeyland successfully depicts the way "capitalism functions even in the most rural areas". She and her dying, half-blind mother, Nazife, were the last residents of the abandoned mountain village. Self: Honeyland. (and find out what happened to Hatidze). Culture 06.02.2020 / 14:39. "The love that she was keeping for a family of her own, that never came true, eventually went to the bees," says Kotevska. [42] In a separate year-end review, Scott and Manohla Dargis of the same newspaper named Honeyland the best film of 2019, and called it "nothing less than a found epic". Most of the houses were still in ruins, slowly sliding into the undergrowth. 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. She has been working with the bees all her life and everything she has learned, she learned from them.". They also planned to follow the natural change of the river's flow that takes place every ten years. 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. Hatidze gets very close to the bees, often using no protection. 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. [41] A.O. But theres another dimension to Hatidzes story that, for me, elevates the film above a simple fable about human greed. The home she lives in was purchased for her by the documentary filmmakers after they won their first award at the Sarajevo film festival. Honeyland Review: An accomplished and heartfelt documentary exploring a lost way of life and impact of the modern world on our environment . [30] Los Angeles Times journalist Justin Chang described it as one of the rare films that serve as an "intimately infuriating, methodically detailed allegory of the earth's wonders being ravaged by the consequences of human greed". I wondered why someone would agree to bare herself on camera this way. But the Honeyland directors, together with two cameramen, spent three years, on and off, visiting these families. We are filmmakers, not social workers.. The content you requested does not exist or is not available anymore. So we can probably say that the bees brought us to her.. Can you pitch in a few bucks to help fund Mother Jones' investigative journalism? Hatidze lives with her ailing mother in the mountains of Macedonia, making a living cultivating honey using ancient beekeeping traditions. Hatidze Muratova, a Macedonian beekeeper who's at the heart of the film "Honeyland.". The woman's name is Hatidze. Sam disregards Hatide's advice to always leave half of the honey for his bees and proceeds to sell the entire stock of honey. At its heart, this film is a character study, a meditation on the life of a woman who has carved out a precarious existence in an unforgiving place. Dan on January 31, 2020 at 11:01 am . "Sarah Jessica Parker was very excited to meet her after seeing the film," "Honeyland" producer Atanas Georgiev told AFP. And that change speaks to a wider ethical conundrum that Mr. Stefanov and his colleagues have grappled with since finishing filming one that has long troubled documentary filmmakers. [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. [49], David Sims of The Atlantic called Honeyland "a rare nature documentary that's deeply personal". Mr. Sam wanted its water for his cows, while Ms. Muratova said it was only for human use. (2019)/(),(),Honeyland. Hatidze Muratova's grandfather taught her to harvest honey using ancient beekeeping traditions. In the end we came up with the best possible solution and that's to edit on mute. She lives in the ruins of a farming village several hours from the capital city of Skopje, a 50 . Campaigns to collect additional funds to support Hatidze are on-going. 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. Honeyland (Macedonian: , transliterated: Medena zemja) is a 2019 Macedonian documentary film that was directed by Tamara Kotevska and Ljubomir Stefanov. At its heart, this film is a character study, a meditation on the life of a woman who has carved out a precarious existence in an unforgiving place. [39], On 22 October 2019, Honeyland was released in the US on video on demand and DVD by Universal Studios. Sucked into the dispute, the crew tried to stay neutral by providing legal assistance to both parties, and they mediated an agreement by which Ms. Muratova would withdraw her complaint in exchange for Mr. Sams promise to abide by a set of principles about his future behavior. 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. Honeyland is the story of Hatidze, a lone rural beekeeper in the spectacular, almost unpopulated Macedonian mountain countryside. what happened to Hatidze might be easier to understand, because they . As observers, should they ever help their subjects? Hatidze Muratova, the star of the documentary Honeyland, was given a new house by the producers of the double Oscar nominated movie. 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. "Ljubo Stefanov. They slept in tents and hammocks in front of Hatide's house. For the film crew, said Ms. Muratova, it was more demanding to deal with us after the film than during the filming itself.. "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". [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. When they were asking for my hand?, Hatidze seems to wonder about the paths her life might have taken. Fejmi Daut, one of the documentary's cinematographers, said the lack of electricity in the village meant the production crew relied on daylight, candles, gaslight and a fireplace to achieve desired image quality. July 26, 2019 11:07 pm. Help Mother Jones' reporters dig deep with a tax-deductible donation. But the documentary doesnt teach us much about cultivating honey. [14] Upon arriving at the location, the film crew was introduced to Hatide. Hatidze lives with her ailing mother in the mountains of Macedonia, making a living cultivating honey using ancient beekeeping traditions. [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. [40] At Metacritic, which assigns a normalized rating out of 100 to reviews from mainstream publications, the film received an average score of 86 based on 26 reviews, indicating "universal acclaim". It was never the main source of income for the villagers, but the families passed it down through generations. She lives with her ailing mother in a shack in a deserted village, without electricity, void of every convenience. Titles . Hatidze Muratova Nazife Muratova Hussein Sam Ljutvie Sam . France 24 - International breaking news, top stories and headlines. [45], Grading Honeyland with four stars out of five, Ty Burr from The Boston Globe said the film's strongest point is that it serves as "both allegory and example, a symbolic tale about the importance of nature's balance and a specific story about these specific lives", and called Hatide "a figure for the ages". [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. The stylists shared her pictures, saying she is now ready to . "So, Hatidze's destiny was to stay and take care of her parents.". The most awarded film at the 2019 Sundance Film Festival . This principle is based on the customs and traditions of her grandfather, who taught her bees need to use their own honey to obtain enough energy to fly and mate. But Ms. Muratovas cramped, dark living room, site of the movies most moving scene, no longer felt lived in. Hatidze Muratova, a 50-something woman, is . "Not understanding Turkish was a problem during the shooting, but we decided to let them speak as they naturally would," says Kotevska. "honeyland," directed by tamara kotevska and ljubomir stefanov, is set in macedonia and follows the life of the region's last nomadic beekeeper hatide muratova, much of the film tracks the. But Kotevska's main impression of Los Angeles is: "From the tall buildings, I cannot see the stars.". Nevertheless she still spends the bee season in her old village. Honeyland has much to say about conserving nature, but its lessons are also about human life and relationships. However, Hussein, the father of the family, wants to harvest honey on a larger scale and for more profit. Hatidze makes a living using ancient beekeeping traditions. As the nomadic family decides to move to another village, Hatide remains alone in Bekirlija. . We have no option but to cope with it somehow," said Georgiev, who also edited the film. According to Kotevska, virtually none of the film's scenes are inauthentic the only part that had to be recreated was the Sams arrival in the village, which the filmmakers had missed their first year of filming. [16] Hatide and the nomad family were camera-shy at first but became used to the process as filming progressed. She hikes along a mountain ridge, prying a small, flat slab from the. Their avarice, and the events that soon unfold, haveled many critics to praise the film as an allegory for the modern worlds impact on our most fragile ecosystems. In addition to finding Ms. Muratova a new house, he and his team bought Mr. Sam a new truck and fixed his familys chimney. Stefanov says that in the traditional communities in that part of the world, regardless of the religion or ethnicity, "there is an unwritten rule that the last-born female child stays with the parents until their death". But under pressure to produce more from a local merchant, he breaks Hatidze's golden rule of leaving half for the bees, with disastrous consequences for everyone. [11][12] The project was also part of the Swiss Agency for Development and Cooperation's program for preservation of North Macedonia's natural resources. Agence France-presse / February 6, 2020 Deep within the Balkans, Hatidze Muratova is the last in a long line of Macedonian wild beekeepers. BEKIRLIJA, North Macedonia When the producer and two directors of Honeyland returned to the setting of their documentary in North Macedonia for the first time since it earned two Oscar nominations in February, something fundamental had changed. At Spains request, the European Court of Justice excluded Kosovo from participating in the Body of European Regulators for Electronic Communications (BEREC), the Court of Justice of the European Union informed. 7 New Netflix Shows in October 2022 -- and the Best Reasons to Watch. "Sharing with bees and with nature is the key to her survival," says Stefanov. 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. The directors focused only on the visuals without making use of audio recordings or transcripts. For more information about the series, and a complete schedule, visit IDA. Read about our approach to external linking. Here, she lives alone with her mother, putting in all her time and energy to make sure they live happily and peacefully. That was largely thanks to Mr. Stefanov and his fellow filmmakers. They have since helped set Hatidze up in a new winter home close to her relatives in the "nearest village to civilisation". "This was the most valuable lesson for us as the authors of the future films. "Everything we've heard from Hatidze refers to bees. Honeyland received its world premiere at the 2019 Sundance Film Festival on 28 January and it has grossed $1,315,037. 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. Filming of Honeyland lasted three years, and 400 hours of footage was filmed. 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. [9], Honeyland is Tamara Kotevska's and Ljubomir Stefanov's second collaboration on a documentary movie after Lake of Apples (2017). [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. Hatidze Muratova in Honeyland (2019) Close. She described Hatide's case as a portrayal of "how consumerism destroys natural resources completely". Honeyland. When the rules are broken, everyone pays the price. Now this place and these people are different, said a wistful Ljubomir Stefanov, one of the films two co-directors, sitting in Ms. Muratovas garden. This is the first of many surprises in Honeyland (2019), a documentary set in a rugged, barely inhabited region of Macedonia where an extraordinary woman named Hatidze maintains ancient traditions of wild beekeeping. Gender shouldn't be the topic of discussion. The film was initially planned as a short film documenting the region surrounding the river Bregalnica but its area of focus changed when the directors met Hatide. Inexpensive, too! Aremote village in the mountains of Macedonia is the setting for Honeyland, a documentary by Tamara Kotevska and Ljubomir Stefanov that follows Hatidze Muratova as she maneuvers through . We spotted Hatidze in the very beginning and just started shooting her. . For more information about the series, and a complete schedule, visit IDA. (Credit: Ljubo Stefanov/Trice Films) [20] The production involved a crew of six: the two directors, two directors of photography, an editor, and a sound engineer. I thought youd abandoned us.. 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 . Hyperallergic speaks to the directors of the first film nominated for both the Best Documentary . Beekeeper Hatidze Muratova leads the filmmakers to the very . In fact it was the other way round. 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. "People love her. Hatidze lives in Bekirlija, an abandoned village with no electricity, running water or roads, where she looks after her ailing mother. Even with this help, Mr. Georgiev is still often drawn into the disputes. Added Kotevska, That, for us, made it feel like we [were] watching a new film. It also made Ms. Muratova perhaps the worlds most famous beekeeper. Directors Tamara Kotevska, Ljubomir Stefanov Starring Hatidze Muratova, Nazife Muratova, Hussein Sam Genres Drama, Documentary, Special Interest Subtitles None available Honeyland. You can see this in our film - in both families, it doesn't make a difference what [gender] they are, they all doing the same things.". [34][35] The documentary includes numerous scenes of Hatide and her neighbors during the beekeeping process, including the handling of the apiaries where the bees are kept, the cutting of honeycombs and the collection of honey in jars. As Kotevska put it, this was her way of liberation.. 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". The . If you value what you get from Mother Jones, please join us with a tax-deductible donation today so we can keep on doing the type of journalism 2023 demands. Read about our approach to external linking. The BBC is not responsible for the content of external sites. In fact, the social worker felt he had made himself too available. [citation needed] In Australia and New Zealand, Honeyland was released by the production company Umbrella Films on 5 March 2020. Moments before leaving, Mr. Sam pulled him aside to ask why he hadnt been in contact so much during the coronavirus lockdown. Honeyland contains elements of several documentary styles, including fly on the wall, direct cinema, and cinma vrit. . She has become a star. What happened in the Ukraine helicopter crash? 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. Critic A.O. Scott, the co-chief film critic of The New York Times, named it the No. The film chronicles the tensions betweenHatidze Muratova, a local beekeeper, and a farmer in the remote hamlet of Bekirlija. All Rights Reserved. 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. Just as worker bees spend their entire lives taking care of the queen bee which never leaves the hive, Hatidze has committed her own life to the care of her blind and paralyzed . We spent hours just thinking what to do with this material. Honeyland received universal critical acclaim from film critics, who praised its attention to detail and applauded its conservationist message. Now it has become the first film ever to get Oscar nominations for both best documentary and best foreign language movie, Hatidze has become a full-blown celebrity who gets stopped in the street by Hollywood stars. "It's important who we were as people, our personalities, this was crucial. HONEYLAND. 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. The duo told the audience at the International Documentary Associations (IDA) annual screening series in Los Angeles they would sleep in tents in their protagonists backyard for three to four days at a time for three years, amassing hundreds of hours of footage they would then spend several months sorting through. "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. [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". [63] Matilda Coleman of The New York Times dubbed the movie an "Oscar game changer" and stated with its two nominations, it paved the way for more success of the documentary genre in future Academy Award nominations. But her quiet existence is fundamentally changed when the nomadic Sam family, consisting of parents with seven unruly children, a noisy vehicle and a large herd of cattle, moves into the village. Hatidze spends her time caring for her bees which she keeps in the stone walls of old structures and in the rocks of cliffs instead of modern bee boxes and for her mother. 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