Hive (2021)
Director: Blerta Basholli Run Time: 84 min. Rating: NR Release Year: 2021
Starring: Adriana Matoshi, Aurita Agushi, Çun Lajçi, Kumrije Hoxha, Yllka Gashi
Country: Kosovo, Switzerland, Albania, Republic of Macedonia
Language: Albanian
About the film:
Winner of the Audience Award, Directing Award, and World Cinema Grand Jury Prize at the 2021 Sundance Film Festival. Fahrije has battled grief and financial struggle since her husband went missing during the war in Kosovo. To provide for her family, she launches a business selling hot pepper preserves, a controversial act of independence that scandalizes her patriarchal village. Amid doubts of her husband’s return, she struggles not only to keep her family afloat but against a hostile community who seeks to violently undermine the independence and sisterhood she is determined to gain.
Hive is Kosovo’s official submission for Best International Feature at the 94th Academy Awards.
“Basholli’s auspicious tale of female resilience…tackles the open wounds of a deadly episode in the history of the young Balkan country”
—Carlos Aguilar for Roger Ebert
About the filmmaker:
From Kosovo, writer-director Blerta Basholli’s stories explore social and gender issues in the country where she was born and raised. In 2008, she was awarded the Dean’s Fellowship at the Film Graduate Program at Tisch School of the Arts at NYU. Her narrative short films Lena and Me and Gjakova 726 were shown at festivals across the globe, and her documentary short Mirror, Mirror… was officially selected at the 2006 Sarajevo Film Festival, among others.
In 2011, she returned to Kosovo and began work on her debut feature Hive inspired by the true story of Fahrije.
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