Honeyland

Few documentaries of recent cinematic vintage have managed to marry truth and art as skillfully as Honeyland. Through images of unparalleled natural beauty, but also through a harsh naturalism that vividly captures the arduous experience of life in the mountainous provinces, this sublime film by Ljubomir Stefanov and Tamara Kotevska slips us – as secret observers – into a chthonic universe where survival is never a given and where human coexistence is defined (and constantly being put on the line) by the inexorable law of necessity. Poetically melancholic, visually stunning, and semantically infallible in the discreet way in which it spotlights the problem of greed as a key factor in the intemperate exploitation of the natural world and in social breakdown, Honeyland offers up an abundance of both “honey” (an unforgettable esthetic experience) and “stings” (delivered by the realization of truths that hurt) – and, as is often the case with cinematic gems, you cannot have the former without the latter.