An amazing narrative built from observational filming over three years. Hatidze lives in a remote abandoned Macedonian village with her elderly mother. She harvest honey from bees she has carefully cultivated and sells it in Skopje.

A family – Huzein and wife and five or so kids – arrives and sets up home nearby with cattle and noise and chaos. Hussein sees how Hatidze makes money from honey so sets up hives. She tells him to take half and leave half. A seller comes and makes him harvest too much, so all his bees kill her bees.

We see the lengths that humans will go to to make money – the men even chainsaw a tree over a river to capture a hive. We see the bonds that Hatidze makes with one of the sons, telling him how it would have been different if she had had a son. She talks of how her father turned all the matchmaker suitors away.

The family leave. Snow falls. Wolves howl. The mother dies. Life goes on. This is a film of remarkable intimacy, with no trace of directors Tamara Kotevska and Ljubomir Stefanov. It feels like an ancient tragedy playing out in our lifetime but also an affirmation of what is beautiful and enduring in the natural world.