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		  Honeyland (9/10) 
		by Tony Medley 
		Runtime 90 minutes. 
		NR. 
		This is an amazing film. While 
		it’s hard to believe that it’s really a documentary and that all that is 
		happening is actually happening and not by actors, that’s exactly what 
		it is. 
		Directed by 
		Ljubomir 
		Stefanov and Tamara Kotevska, there is no script because the movie was 
		shot in real time of the people involved, all of whom are illiterate. 
		Hatidze lives in a wild region of Macedonia with her dying mother, 
		Nazife, who is blind and paralyzed, and keeps bees the ancient way, 
		taking only half of the production to sell and leaving the other half 
		for the bees. 
		
		Stefanov and Kotevska started shooting 
		and were well on their way when another family moved in and horned in on 
		Hatidze’s bee-keeping business, upon which she relied to survive. She 
		generously tried to help them. Her business was handed down from 
		generation to generation and she is the last survivor. But she knew what 
		she was doing and the new family clearly did not. 
		
		They shot over 400 hours of footage 
		over a period of three years, including heart-touching intimate moments 
		with her mother. With no narration, just what you see on the screen, the 
		location is, according to the Production Notes, “an 
		unearthly land, unattached to a specific time and geography, unreachable 
		by regular roads, and yet only 20 km away from the nearest modern city.” 
		
		I saw the movie before I knew anything 
		about it and finally came to the conclusion that it must be a 
		brilliantly scripted and acted film. Then I came to know that it was 
		true cinéma-vérité in the strict sense of the term, that there was no 
		script and no direction and no actors; the extremely small crew was 
		actually just shooting things as they happened, and I was overwhelmed 
		and filled with empathy for Hatidze and the life she was leading. 
		
		This shows how some people actually 
		live today, and it is astonishing. I don’t think you will ever see 
		another movie like this that exhibits life as it really is. I had tears 
		in my eyes when it ended. In 
		Turkish, Bosnian and Macedonian. 
		
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