Hatidze Muratova collects honey from local bees in rural North Macedonia. She's alone caring for her elderly mother. Times are getting tougher. A Turkish family moves in next door with their cattle. Then they start raising their own bees and conflict follows.

This is a documentary of a woman and her bees. At first, I figured that it'd be a simple movie of beautiful poverty and living with nature. I did not expect the devastating neighbor drama and the tragic perseverance with her mother. I'm almost certain that some of the conversations have been recreated. In fact, the story is so great that I wonder if it has been manufactured. The chainsaw scene is just devastating. That whole conflict is so small and so important. This is a personal epic.

I remember seeing Mark Kermode review this Awards Season contender from Macedonia on The Film Review on BBC News, it looked and sounded like an interesting watch. Basically, it is about the life and labours of Hatidze Muratova, a Macedonian beekeeper of Turkish descent who lives in the village of Bekirlija in the municipality of Lozovo. The village is secluded in a secluded mountain, meaning she has no access to electricity or running water. She is one of the last wild beekeepers in the country and the continent. Hatidze lives with and cares for her 85-year-old partly blind bed-ridden mother, Nazife, who is completely dependent on her daughter. She makes money by harvesting the honey she gets from beekeeping and selling her products in the country's capital Skopje, a trip takes her four hours on foot and by train. Muratova when collecting honeycomb always enough for the bees, as they need the nutrition to obtain more energy for flying and mating, this tradition is a principle passed down from her ancestors. Peace and quiet for Hatidze and her routine are disrupted with the arrival of a Turkish nomadic family in a trailer. Hussein Sam is a rancher, with him are his wife Ljutvie, their seven children and several imported domestic animals. Hatidze maintains good relationships with them and bonds with the family's children who frequently invade her privacy. Sam becomes interested in beekeeping himself, she explains the art of doing so and passes on the advice from her ancestors. In need of financial means to sustain his family, Sam decides to start his own colony of bees. Sam disregards her advice and takes as much honey produced as possible to help his family and meet customer requests. This leads to Sam's bees attacking Hatidze's hive during the winter period, when resources will become scarce, thus bringing an end to Hatidze's way of living. Hatidze scolds Sam for not following her advice as she finds her bee colony collapsing. After her mother passes away and the nomadic family decides to move on, she remains alone in the village. This is not one of those films filled with interviews, narration or archive footage, it is much more like a story playing out on screen, seeing the woman cultivating honey using ancient beekeeping traditions, and disrupted by the unruly neighbours. It is most watchable to see how honey is produced and collected, the protagonist is an interesting character, and the interactions between the family members are watchable, it is a worthwhile documentary. It was nominated the Oscars for Best Documentary Feature, and Best International Feature Film. Very good!

"Honeyland" has such a strong dramatic narrative that you wouldn't necessarily know it was a documentary rather than a scripted fictional film.

It tells the story of a woman eking out an existence in the mountains of North Macedonia while caring for her ailing mother. Her life is extremely hard and void of any of the conveniences most of us take for granted -- you know, such minor things like electricity and plumbing -- but she's developed a rhythm that works for her, one that relies very much on a symbiotic relationship with the natural world. She raises bees, and takes the honey she harvests from them into the nearest city to sell at marketplaces. Then enter this absolutely horrid neighbor family who come bumbling into her neighborhood and makes a mess of everything. They're after a quick buck without knowing how to do anything the right way, so they kill all of her bees, nearly ruin the bees' natural habitat, lose a whole bunch of their cows to a disease, all while shouting and bickering and making jackasses of themselves in front of a film crew.

The dynamic between these neighbors captures the dynamic of the world in microcosm. There are those who understand that humans and nature can co-exist, indeed must co-exist if humans are to survive, and those who just want to shortsightedly rape the earth for what they can get from it right now. It's a quietly devastating documentary.

"Honeyland" is the only film in Oscar history to be nominated for both Best International Feature Film and Best Documentary Feature.

EDIT: At the time I wrote the above statement it was true. But since then "Collective" has gone on to do the same.

Grade: A.