Hive (2021)

Three Sundance awards. All three of the main ones, in fact. Grand Jury Prize, Audience Award, Directing Award, all in the World Cinema Dramatic Competition. That's a clean sweep that, by any measure, should signal something exceptional. And yet, sitting here trying to articulate what makes Hive exceptional, I find myself reaching for words that don't quite arrive. It's a good film. A solid, worthwhile film. But exceptional? I'm not fully convinced.

That's not a dig at the story itself, which is genuinely compelling. Hive is based on the true story of Fahrije, a woman in Kosovo whose husband went missing during the Kosovo War and was never found. She's left in that particular limbo that's somehow worse than grief: no body, no closure, no official ending, just absence stretching out indefinitely. Her response is to organise a collective of women in similar situations, building something out of nothing. Ajvar production. Farming. Driving lessons. The basics of economic independence, essentially.

And here's where the film genuinely opened my eyes. Because the village Fahrije lives in is deeply, stubbornly traditional, and I mean that in a way that made me sit up straight. Women driving isn't just frowned upon here, it's treated as a kind of transgression. The hostility she faces from her neighbours and even members of her own community for doing something as ordinary as getting behind the wheel is shocking in a quiet, creeping way. The film doesn't sensationalise it. It just shows it, matter-of-factly, and lets you absorb how suffocating that environment is.

It reminded me in some ways of Mustang (2015), another film about women in a conservative community fighting for basic autonomy in the face of tradition used as a weapon against them. Both films find their power in the specificity of place, and both are rooted in performances that feel utterly real. The lead performance in Hive carries the film entirely. There's a stillness to it, a weariness under the surface that never tips into melodrama. She's not performing suffering. She's just enduring it, and pushing forward anyway.

So why only three stars? Honestly, because the film is, as much as I hate to say it about something so earnest, a bit straightforward. There's no scene that genuinely surprises you, no formal choice that makes you lean forward, no moment that reframes what you've been watching. It follows the beats you'd expect from a story like this: resistance, setback, solidarity, small victory, more resistance. The story deserves to be told. The subject matter matters. But the telling of it is functional rather than extraordinary, which makes the Sundance clean sweep feel slightly puzzling in retrospect.

Maybe the awards reflect how much the subject matter moved audiences in the room, and I get that. Kosovo's recent history is not something most Western viewers know deeply, and seeing that history filtered through one woman's personal struggle gives it a human scale that statistics and news footage never quite manage. As a piece of awareness-raising, it works beautifully. As a piece of cinema judged purely on craft and storytelling ambition, it sits a tier or two below its trophy cabinet.

Still, I'm glad it's part of the A-Z World Movie Tour. Kosovo isn't exactly overrepresented in international distribution, and this is a film that clearly means something to the people who made it and the community it depicts. Sometimes that counts for a lot. I just wish the filmmaking had taken a few more risks to match the bravery of the woman at its centre.

Three stars.

Rating: ★★★  | Year: 2021  | Watched: 2025-07-06

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Where to watch

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