“Hive” (M) ****

THE world today waits with bated breath to see how Russian bullying in the Ukraine will pan out.

In 1998/99, not all that far distant from that hotspot, history remembers another war in the province of Kosovo and a brutal massacre of Albanian men.

Fast forward, perhaps two decades, to a small Kosovo village whose husbands went missing during that war. Within the heavily patriarchal hierarchy of the country’s rural society, widows are expected to wait in expectation of their husbands’ return, subsisting on paltry welfare handouts, a community where a woman who takes a job or establishes a business is regarded as a subversion of the natural order, a sign of disrespect to the husband and possibly loose morals.

Writer/director Blerta Basholli’s debut film “Hive” mines a real-life story of perseverance against powerful prejudice against women for the small seams of comfort and hope it can yield. 

Fahrije’s (Yllka Gashi) husband’s body has never been found, despite frustratingly slow official efforts to locate massacre victims’ bodies. The film tells the story of her refusal to yield to the social punishments inflicted on women simply because of their gender.

“Hive” is not a happy film. Nor a totally depressing one. Fahrije commits the sin of getting a driver’s licence. When someone throws a stone through her car’s window and calls her a whore, older men sitting outside a cafe do nothing to help her. They seem to approve.

Fahrije enlists other widows in a campaign to assert some kind of independence. They gather honey and sell it. They make ajvar (a roasted red-pepper condiment popular in the region), with her friend Naze (Kumrije Hoxha), an irreverent, forthright older woman who brings to the often-dour mood a welcome breath of humour. 

“Hive” is an understated, cautious film. That it picked up audience, directing and grand jury prizes at Sundance perhaps underlies the admiration it engenders for the real Fahrije (whose homemade pickle business continues to thrive), and the seeming ease with which her story can be mapped to the beats of a familiar triumph-over-adversity narrative. 

It’s not a fun film. But by golly, it’s one that filmgoers of goodwill will find uplifting, rewarding, and sustained by an underlying poignant, irrefutable message about adversity confronted by courage. And an ending like the kick of a mule. 

At the coming Oscars, “Hive” is nominated in the foreign-language category, which bids fair to be this year’s most difficult category for pundits to forecast correctly.

At Dendy and Palace Electric