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Macedonia · 2019
1h 25m
Director Tamara Kotevska
Starring Hatidzhe Muratova, Nazife Muratova, Hussein Sam, Ljutvie Sam
Genre Documentary
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Hatidze Muratova is one of the last so-called "bee hunters" left in Europe. She raises bees in a minimally invasive manner, based on the sustainability principle of "take half, leave half." But when itinerant farmers arrive, they threaten the precarious balance she has so painstakingly established.
There is an unassuming languidness to Ljubomir Stefanov and Tamara Kotevska’s anthropologic documentary about a rural Macedonian beekeeper, “Honeyland.” It’s a quiet and passive film that’s content to luxuriate in place and revel in solitude, which, in turn, both drags the narrative’s loose pacing and instills a certain natural structure that, once embraced, becomes almost mesmerizing.
The New York Times by A.O. Scott
The opening minutes of Honeyland are as astonishing — as sublime and strange and full of human and natural beauty — as anything I’ve ever seen in a movie.
The New Yorker by Anthony Lane
Honeyland swarms with difficult, ancient truths about parents, children, greed, respect, and the need for husbandry.
The A.V. Club by Charles Bramesco
Though Honeyland is also about what it’s about; in addition to underscoring another inconvenient truth with planetary stakes, the film offers tender, patient portraiture to a woman wholly dedicated to her calling. The melding of the political with the personal has seldom involved so many stingers to the face.
This bitter and beautiful Sundance-winning doc focuses on a single beekeeper as though our collective future hinges on her hives.
A sensitivity to both petty human concerns and striking natural beauty is what makes Honeyland a particularly enthralling documentary.
The opening frames of Honeyland are so rustically sumptuous that you wonder, for a second, if they’ve somehow been art-directed.
Los Angeles Times by Justin Chang
[A] lovely, heartrending movie.
Slant Magazine by Keith Watson
As the world continues to suffer ever-increasing mass die-offs of honeybee colonies, Ljubomir Stefanov and Tamara Kotevska’s film reminds us that there’s indeed a better way to interact with our planet—one rooted in patience, tradition, and a true respect for our surroundings.
The Hollywood Reporter by Sheri Linden
As with any vérité portrait, there are many things that go unexplained. But the images tell us what we need to know: The unforced choreography between Hatidze and the bees.
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