Genre Documentary

Nahal - From the Hives of Oman (2021)

Item: Nahal - From the Hives of Oman
Rating: 2.5
Author: Ross McLaren

★★½ — Nahal - From the Hives of Oman (2021)

Right, so I'll be upfront: I did not seek this one out because I have a burning passion for apiculture. I watched it because I'm working my way through an A-Z World Movie Tour, and Oman landed on my list. Nahal: From the Hives of Oman was, as far as I can tell, the only Omani documentary available to me, and here we are. First review of it on Letterboxd, apparently. Make of that what you will.

So. Bees. Specifically, bees in Oman. If that sentence just made your eyes glaze over, I get it, and honestly this film might not be for you. But if you've got even a passing curiosity about the natural world and the people who dedicate their lives to it, there's something quietly watchable here. It's not going to set your world on fire, but it held my attention well enough.

The thing that genuinely surprised me, and I wasn't expecting to be surprised by anything, is that Oman has both domesticated honey bees and wild dwarf bees. I didn't know dwarf bees were a thing. I had to sit with that for a moment. Two distinct species, two entirely different relationships with the beekeepers who tend to them or simply coexist with them. That's actually a decent hook for a documentary, and the film uses it reasonably well to show the contrast between traditional, inherited beekeeping practices and something wilder and less controllable.

The beekeepers themselves come across as people who genuinely love what they do, and there's something meditative about watching them work. The landscape helps. Oman looks striking on camera, and whoever shot this knew what they were doing. The cinematography is clean and considered, making good use of the terrain and the light. It gives the whole thing a kind of quiet dignity that a scrappier production might have lacked.

My issue, and it's not a massive one, is that the film doesn't quite push far enough into anything. It gestures at the cultural significance of beekeeping in Oman, at the tradition being passed down through generations, at the ecological stakes, but it never really commits to exploring any of those threads in depth. It's a brief film, and you feel that brevity. Just when something interesting starts to surface, you're sort of nudged along to the next shot of a hive.

I've seen documentaries take a similarly niche subject and turn it into something genuinely gripping. Werner Herzog did it repeatedly, including with Lessons of Darkness (1992), which finds apocalyptic grandeur in burning oil fields. Obviously that's a different beast entirely, but it's a reminder that a narrow focus doesn't have to mean a narrow film. Nahal is content to stay surface level, and there are moments where you wish it had more ambition.

That said, I don't want to be too hard on it. It's a well-made short documentary about a corner of the world that rarely gets much screen time, covering a subject that most people would never think to look into. On that level it does its job. I came away knowing more about Omani beekeeping than I did going in, which was knowing absolutely nothing, and the visuals are pleasant enough that it never feels like homework.

Two and a half stars. Decent enough if you give a shit about bees, or if, like me, you're on a world tour and Oman's come up. Won't be losing sleep over it either way.

Rating: ★★½ | Year: 2021 | Watched: 2025-08-08

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