Hive

When her hus­band goes miss­ing while fight­ing in the Koso­vo War of 1998, Farid­je (Yll­ka Gashi) faces divi­sion at home. She has two chil­dren and an ail­ing father-in-law (Çun Lajçi) to pro­vide for, yet her desire to work sees her become a source of gos­sip. Even worse, she is seen as giv­ing up on her hus­band. Pounc­ing on an oppor­tu­ni­ty from a super­mar­ket, she starts pro­duc­ing jars of ajvar, a home­made condi­ment made from pep­pers, and grad­u­al­ly recruits her friends and neigh­bours to join her.

Bler­ta Basholli’s film could eas­i­ly have descend­ed into sweep­ing melo­dra­ma, but is instead a qui­et char­ac­ter study with stings and smiles along the way. The direc­tor favours show­ing the dev­as­ta­tion of a com­mu­ni­ty rather than over­ly roman­ti­cis­ing the suc­cess­es of her sub­jects. These are women left unan­chored with­out their hus­bands, and the film does well to make sure their new­found inde­pen­dence doesn’t eclipse their loss.

The colours are mut­ed and there is often no score, with silence per­me­at­ing to empha­sise that void. The main instance of music and colour is diegetic – when the women decide to throw a party.

As the search for miss­ing per­sons con­tin­ues, the recog­nis­able aspects of foren­sic inves­ti­ga­tion become harsh and real­is­ti­cal­ly unwieldy in their poten­tial for res­o­lu­tion. Though the name of the film points towards a group of women who come to Faridje’s aid, she is very much the queen bee, dom­i­nat­ing the screen in every scene. Not in any sense of supe­ri­or­i­ty, but every­thing here is cen­tralised to her.

She’s not a huge­ly talk­a­tive char­ac­ter, so we only learn oth­er sto­ries from her inter­ac­tions, almost to the point of tun­nel vision. There is per­haps more to learn about how the oth­er women deal with oppres­sive in-laws, the weight of expec­ta­tions and the unique voids they face.

Though this nar­row focus could be con­strued as a lim­i­ta­tion, Gashi’s per­for­mance of sto­ic deter­mi­na­tion keeps Hive afloat. Like Farid­je, we don’t have time to think about the whis­pers from peo­ple telling her she shouldn’t be inde­pen­dent when there’s work to be done. And like­wise, she can’t afford to dwell on her husband’s dis­ap­pear­ance, though her fam­i­ly are more vocal­ly emo­tion­al about him. It makes the charged moments of pause, when she takes a breath, or over­hears her chil­dren talk with their grand­fa­ther, even more poignant.

Hive del­i­cate­ly lays out its heroine’s arc with plen­ty of uncer­tain­ty to hit home the lim­bo that women like her face. At 84 min­utes, it does not out­stay its wel­come, favour­ing a pared-back approach when deal­ing with its real-life inspi­ra­tion. It’s a wor­thy sub­ject con­fi­dent­ly han­dled, but with­out a more tex­tured land­scape, Hive feels more iso­lat­ed than it could be for the com­mu­ni­ty its title refers to.

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