Writer/director Blerta Basholli’s debut became the first in Sundance history to win all three big awards in the World Cinema Dramatic Competition. Based on a true story, Hive tells of a woman struggling with fading hope following the disappearance of her husband during the Kosovan war.
In March 1999, the Kosovan village of Krusha e Madhe was the site of a massacre that left 240 people dead or missing. Seven years later, the villagers live with not knowing the fate of their loved ones. In the absence of her husband, whose fate is uncertain, Fahrije (Yllka Gashi) has become everything from homemaker to comforter to her father-in-law Haxhi (Cun Lajci) and her two children.
To provide for them, Fahije hopes to start a small business selling the roasted red pepper relish ajvar to city supermarkets. But in the traditional patriarchal village where she lives, her ambition and efforts to empower herself and other women are met with resentment and suspicion. Sustenance may finally come through an independent food business - but Fahrije and her peers will have to take on the misogynists standing between them and a better way of life.
Albanian, Swiss German
English
Albania, Macedonia (the former Yugoslav Republic of), Switzerland, Kosovo
Ikone Studio, Spirit