Overview
2021 swarmed with historic achievements for women in film, including Nomadland's Chloë Zhao becoming the first woman of colour and only second woman ever to win the Oscar for Best Director, that category's nomination of two female filmmakers for the first time in its then 93-year history and the Cannes Film Festival awarding the Palme d'Or to a woman — Titane's Julia Ducournau — for only the second time. But before all of that, Kosovo-born writer/director Blerta Basholli achieved something at the Sundance Film Festival that'd never been done either: winning the US fest's World Cinema Dramatic Competition Grand Jury Prize, Audience Award and Best Director gong for Hive. It was a well-deserved feat for a movie that'd stick in memory even without such an achievement, and it's easy to see why Sundance's jurors and viewers responded with such a show of support. A powerhouse of a true tale that's brought to the screen with a devastatingly potent lead performance, Hive is simply unshakeable.
In Basholli's first feature, to peer at star Yllka Gashi (Kukumi) is to look deep into a battler's eyes. Hive directs its attention her way frequently. The also-Kosovan actor plays Fahrije Hoti, a woman who has never been allowed to stop fighting, although the men in her patriarchal village would prefer she'd keep quiet. They wish she'd just attend to her duties as a mother and do what's expected. They think she should be a silent, compliant wife, although there's a significant problem with that idea. With her husband missing for years due to the Kosovo War, she can't be a meekly obedient spouse even if that was in her nature — which it isn't — because the man she loves is gone, no sign of him either dead or alive has been recovered, and she's trapped in limbo as she waits, tries to keep caring for her family and endeavours to go on.
Those dismissive, misogynistic attitudes flung at Fahrije by her community join the litany of roadblocks that she's forced to rally against with every word, thought and breath she has. In her husband's absence, her father-in-law Haxhi (Çun Lajçi, Zana) is eager to maintain the status quo, but Fahrije has been trying to make ends meet anyway, all in a town — and amidst a male-dominated culture — that couldn't be more unsympathetic to her plight. She isn't alone, however, with many of the locale's other women also widowed due to the conflict, and similarly expected to survive without upsetting traditional gender roles. So, with the beehives that she dutifully attends to unable to keep providing enough income to pay her bills, the enterprising Fahrije and her friend Nazmije (Kumrije Hoxha, The Marriage) decide to start a female-run co-operative to make and sell ajvar, a pepper relish.
A picture of stinging resilience, unflappable fortitude and baked-in sorrow, Gashi is phenomenal as Fahrije. Not only does Hive keep gazing her way but, thanks to the raw compulsion of her performance, viewers eagerly do the same. The skill required to play stoic but also persistent, passionate and simmering with internalised pain can't be underestimated, and watching Gashi navigate that balance like it's the only thing she knows — because, for Fahrije after her husband's disappearance, it now is — is affecting on a gutwrenching level. Lived-in fury and resolve buzzes through every facet of her portrayal, all as the woman whose shoes she's walking in weathers derision, violence and attempted sexual assault for daring to dream of attempting to support herself. It comes as no surprise that various film festival prizes have been sent Gashi's way among Hive's collection of accolades, with ample merit.
Such masterful and moving work is never an actor's alone, though — and, behind the lens, Basholli puts in just as magnificent an effort in making Fahrije's story, and Gashi's performance along with it, so commanding and all-consuming. Both the filmmaker and her lead play with reality, drawing upon the real-life Hoti's stirring and inspiring experiences; however, Hive could never be mistaken for a standard biopic. Basholli's script may trace a familiar narrative arc, as many tales of rallying against adversity and oppression do, but nothing about her film feels as if its beats are being faithfully hit to chart a straightforward path and evoke an easy emotional reaction — not at any time, and not even once. Instead, the meticulous care that's been put into every exactingly staged and observed scene is evident at every moment, resulting in a movie that's not just rousing but thoroughly lived-in.
Understated in its style and unfurling of its story alike, if the blistering Hive shares similarities with any other features, it's with the work of Basholli's fellow Kosovan filmmakers who've also used their movies to grapple with the impact of the war, the way women have historically been treated, the dynamics within relationships as a result, the reality of life in the post-conflict Balkan republic and/or bits of all of the above. Perusing the country's list of Academy Award submissions paints that picture clearly, including 2014's Three Widows and a Hanging, 2018's The Marriage and 2019's Zana — all films that are as culturally specific about their setting as any can be. But, again, Hive is its own achievement. Perhaps it's more accurate to see Basholli's film as building upon the portrait that past features have started to shade in of her homeland, complete with its own layers and colours. It also adds to the snapshot-within-a-snapshot that've depicted what it means to be a woman on Kosovan soil as well.
Defiance, determination, sporting both in the face of dispiriting and overwhelming forces that want the opposite of what's truly in your best interests, rebelling against convention and the patriarchy, doing just what needs to be done: that's what pulsates through Hive, Gashi's performance and Basholli's directorial choices. So does a shatteringly astute exploration of wading through grief so thick that it may as well be an ocean — of honey or ajvar, take your pick. That's where this deeply resonant film's intimate stares in its protagonist's direction pierce even sharper, seeing everything she's feeling, and just her in general, when so few in her midst will. It's why its scenes of Fahrije and her fellow widows disregarding everything they're told, soldiering on despite the backlash they receive physically and emotionally, and just sitting and making their pepper relish are so fierce and unforgettable, and yet also hopeful, too.
