Honeyland, Ljubomir Stefanov and Tamara Kotevska’s documentary that won three awards at this year’s Sundance, is hosting two closed screenings at the Millennium cinema theater on March 12 and 13.
The film will be released in Macedonia in August as part of the upcoming Makedox Creative Documentary Film Festival, and throughout the United States by American film distributor Neon.
“Our contract says we’ll have screenings in at least 15 cities [in the US], but the number may reach 50, and I believe we’ll reach a million viewers,” Atanas Georgiev, the film’s producer and editor told a news conference Monday.
The documentary won Sundance’s world cinema grand jury prize: documentary, world cinema documentary special jury award for cinematography, and world cinema dramatic special jury award for originality.
“Based on the reviews,” Georgiev said, “we knew we’d win an award, but we didn’t expect to win three.”
Director Tamara Kotevska said the project started as a short documentary about protecting the nature surrounding Bregalnica River and turned into a compelling human story.
Set in an isolated mountain region in the Balkans, the documentary took three years to make.
It focuses on a beekeeper who lives with her ailing mother in a village without roads, electricity or running water.
Her livelihood is threatened when a raucous family of itinerant beekeepers arrives and disrupts the natural balance.
Variety gave Honeyland glowing reviews, describing it as “a plain environmental allegory [that] blossoms without contrivance” and a “ravishingly shot debut.”
Produced by Apollo Media and Trice Films, Honeyland was funded by the Macedonian Film Agency and the Swiss Agency for Development and Cooperation as part of its Nature Conservation Program.
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