Honeyland Q&A with Directors Tamara Kotevska and Ljubomir Stefanov

Tamara Kotevska and Ljubo Stefanov, co-directors of the award-nominated documentary film "Honeyland," participate in a Q&A panel after a screening of their film.

They had worked together on an environmental documentary "Lake of Apples" in the same region of North Macedonia. While doing the research for another environmental documentary about the region surrounding river Bregalnica, they discovered the handmade beehives in the rocks and started asking the locals in the village of Bekirlija who they belonged to. This is how they found their protagonist, Hatidže Muratova. "The bees brought us to her." In her tribe, it's the tradition that the last living female takes care of the parents and not having a family of her own. She essentially lives in the 17th century. She doesn't have electricity. She doesn't have a TV. She doesn't know the difference between a documentary film and TV.

Because of how isolated the village was, they could only bring 4 days worth of food, water, and camera batteries for each trip. They accumulated over 400 hours of footage.

The filming and editing was complicated because the filmmakers do not speak Turkish, and this was an older dialect. They started the edit with just the visual narrative without a translation, and then translated the dialogue scenes. They were able to communicate with both of the families in Macedonian.

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Shot and edited by Viva Videography.