Honeyland, Ljubomir Stefanov, Tamara Kotevska, 2019

Pavilion 2 and 4 - Arena

in collaboration with Milano Design Film Festival

In a remote and semi-abandoned village in the hearth of rural Macedonia, a middle-aged woman, Hatidze, lives alone with her old mother without water and electricity. She dedicates her life to beekeeping, climbing the tortuous hilly paths that surround her house to pull nests out of rock fissures. Hatidze lives in harmony with nature and her bees, until the arrival in the village of the controlling father Hussein breaks the delicate balance of the micro-community. A work of great visual power shot over three years, Honeyland dips into the protagonist's daily life with a refined narrative sensibility. With their first feature film, Ljubomir Stefanov and Tamara Kotevska create an epic portrait of a woman, a heroine with ancient features and a contemporary flavour, a generous and sensitive figure fighting for survival against who threatens the ecological and environmental balance of a land just for profit.