The relatively modern tools Hussein uses to weigh honey only help to cement the film's clear microcosm of the tension between sustainability and industrialization; between restraint and a catastrophic lack of foresight. In that sense, watching "Honeyland" is like looking at the greatest problems of our time through a pinhole, but the film sees the situation with a clarity that gets under your skin and breaks your heart. Far from a scolding, rub-your-nose-in-it depiction of environmental havoc, this is a tender story about the chaos of abandoning the common good. By reflecting Muratova's relationship with her hives against the social contract that she's formed with her mother - and that binds Hussein to his family - Kotevska and Stefanov shine a light on what the bees have always told us: They survive by serving each other. And if they ever disappeared completely, people would only have themselves to blame.
Honeyland
(2019)
And if they ever disappeared completely, people would only have themselves to blame.
29 September 2019