Honeyland          4 stars

Honeyland is a most unusual film, a documentary that unexpectantly became an environmental drama. I heard about it at the 2019 Sundance Film Festival but had not seen it until now. The filmmakers set out to make a documentary about one of the last natural beekeepers in Europe, a woman in her 50’s in Macedonia named Hatidze. She harvests the honey from beehives she finds in the mountains for survival and lives in an abandoned village with only her elderly mother and has no electricity or running water. She makes occasional trips into the city to sell jars of honey for what she can get. Otherwise, she takes care of her mother who can neither walk nor see. The drama starts when a nomadic family of cattle herders moves in next door with their herd and seven children. The patriarch of the family sees how Hatidze tends the bees and decides that would be a good way for him to make a living too. Hatidze gives instruction to the father and one of the sons telling them they must always leave a portion of the honey for the bees; otherwise the hive will collapse. Unfortunately, the warnings go unheeded leading to disastrous consequences. The filmmakers manage to film all this giving no hint of the presence of the crew. The beekeeper, Hatidze has a commanding presence when on screen and has a natural way of dealing with children and animals. The film itself is like a parable of man’s responsibility of taking care of the environment. It would have been fascinating to hear the director’s account of the making of the film. Unfortunately, there were no extras provided on the DVD copy that I used. The only other film like this that comes to mind is The Story of the Weeping Camel in 2004.