"Hive" is set a handful of years after the Kosovo war but still near enough to be in its rattling wake. It's based on a true story of feminist defiance and healing that counts as one of the more affecting tales of recovery to come from the war, which decimated villages and, from its massacres coused by Serbs, left many families of the missing in a limbo of grief that still exists.
Fahrije is one of those ever-waiting wives; we first glimpse her trespassing on a mass grave investigation site to check bags in a U. N. truck for a body, clothes, identification, some sense of finality regarding the husband who disappeared along with so many in her town of Krusha e Madhe. At home, she takes care of a young son and daughter, an infirm father-in-law (Çun Lajçi) and a row of beehives producing honey, the sale of which is barely enough to keep them afloat.
We soon realize that for the remaining old guard of men in her patriarchal town, a missing husband is not an absent figure when it comes to the proper place for the wife, which is in the home, dependent on a man who, in this wretched situation, isn't likely to return. At the regular meetings of a threadbare women's organization Fahrije helps run - its struggling widows reliant on dwindling aid - she listens as the threat of gossip and worse keeps many of these desperate, mourning souls from even getting a driver's license so they can make use of a donated car and earn a living.
Fahrije can't wait, however, for word on what she knows in her bones is the fate of her husband, or for an ancient misogyny to evaporate. She arrives at a solution that will put their whole grieving sisterhood to work: making and jarring the beloved regional red pepper relish known as ajvar and selling it themselves as a business. What isn't as easy to sell to a stricken populace that can't view women as equal members of society is the aroma of independence this enterprise creates.
Fahrije is one of those ever-waiting wives; we first glimpse her trespassing on a mass grave investigation site to check bags in a U. N. truck for a body, clothes, identification, some sense of finality regarding the husband who disappeared along with so many in her town of Krusha e Madhe. At home, she takes care of a young son and daughter, an infirm father-in-law (Çun Lajçi) and a row of beehives producing honey, the sale of which is barely enough to keep them afloat.
We soon realize that for the remaining old guard of men in her patriarchal town, a missing husband is not an absent figure when it comes to the proper place for the wife, which is in the home, dependent on a man who, in this wretched situation, isn't likely to return. At the regular meetings of a threadbare women's organization Fahrije helps run - its struggling widows reliant on dwindling aid - she listens as the threat of gossip and worse keeps many of these desperate, mourning souls from even getting a driver's license so they can make use of a donated car and earn a living.
Fahrije can't wait, however, for word on what she knows in her bones is the fate of her husband, or for an ancient misogyny to evaporate. She arrives at a solution that will put their whole grieving sisterhood to work: making and jarring the beloved regional red pepper relish known as ajvar and selling it themselves as a business. What isn't as easy to sell to a stricken populace that can't view women as equal members of society is the aroma of independence this enterprise creates.