Hive Review

Small businesses and the independence that comes from them can be liberating. To be forced and pushed into independence, the safety net ripped away, as Hive shows, is brutal. Not just forced independence but one in the face of warfare, conflict and misogyny. Each plays their part in Hive, a Kosovo War-set feature that does well to understand the horrors of war but also the implications and ever-shifting societal change as a consequence of it. Fear and desperation turn themselves over in the rotting grief at the centre of Hive, and as Fahrije (Yllka Gashi) unzips body bags and pulls that constant, stern look, Hive finds itself detailing an intimate tragedy with barely a word.  

Remarkable those moments are, they depend often on the intimacies of Blerta Basholli’s direction. Those close-up shots of beekeeping and the slight brutality that comes from little stings are amplified by grief. Pain opens tiny wounds, and Hive fixates on that. Its passive life and the unknowable fate of a missing husband are far more painful than the closure life or death would provide. Miserable scenes ensue but none of them is harsh enough to indicate Basholli is milking the emotions of the audience. Life and the care provided to others are not suspended in grief, ploughing on through is either an act of resistance or an inevitability because to be caught in that standstill has ramifications. Hive shows that with sincerity and a real upset at that expectation of carrying on. 

Post-war movies do not all have to detail the ripples of explosions and the tragedy of exact and immediate death. Grieving in absence of a presence is shown to be as tough as the expressions of remorse over a definite loss. Crippling layers of doubt underscore those meetings between those in the same situation, the horror of hope and the brutal cuts of dreamlike, fragile belief in a missing person being just that, rather than something fatal and definite. Basholli does well with the landscape her characters find themselves in, dictating beauty in dilapidation and the importance of support and family in a case of fighting for a future that Hive shows time and time again is not wanted. Thrust into independence, but that independence creates dependence on others that surround Fahrije. Çun Lajçi’s supporting performance as Haxhi is the guilty burden of accidental breadwinner in a time of strife and outdated views. 

Hive does well to collect this, to use its force as something good and just. It never showcases the emotional turmoil at the core of it as something to be fixed. There is no fix for a missing piece. What Hive, and by extension, Gashi and Basholli, do manage though, is a well-reasoned exploration of post-war conflict. Back-and-forth struggles are not just for the battlefield but for those at home too. Rekindle the spark. It might be tough but it is, as Hive showcases, doable. It stays just as fragile as it does in those first few days of grief and wonder, but it is doable. But Hive is just one example, and the tragedies of the Krusha massacres are told in unflinching, bold detail here.