Interview: Hive director Blerta Basholli
Directed by Blerta Basholli, and currently playing at Sydney Film Festival, Hive is a true story of a strong Kosovan woman Fahrije (Yllka Gashi) who against all odds, social expectations and misogyny, sets out to start a business selling homemade ajvar and honey with other women in her village. Addy Fong talks to Blerta about the film:
I just saw Hive and it’s the first time I’ve heard of Kosovo, perhaps because it’s quite a small country. There’s the war and the country’s fight for independence, can you talk about the film’s context, perhaps a geopolitical reading of the film for audiences who don’t know about it?
I will tell you a little bit about why the film doesn’t say so much about it. Kosovo is a small country and when we’re making films for us, it’s everything, very little detail. I’m Albanian from Kosovo I was born and raised there. I know the culture, I know what it meant politically and how things happened but for the world, of course it’s difficult to understand because political situations are different in every country. As you said, not many people know about Kosovo, so when we’re making films we always try to explain because people don’t know the culture or the political circumstances. We’re always trying to explain and then we end up being descriptive in our films, even I have some short films that are a little bit too descriptive.
It wasn’t just the war, we lived quite a long time in occupation and it’s a very difficult situation to understand, even for me now when I think about it. In this film I did not want to point fingers but rather deal with a human character that other humans could connect with. Of course [the film is set] in small village of Krusha, Kosovo and it’s a specific character based on a real story and in a specific country, but I really wanted to focus on the character, so we don’t have to think a lot about cultural aspects and understand them, but just connect on a human level. The story is set a couple of years after the war in Kosovo, where during the war, a lot of people lost their family members and they were never found, even today. In a lot of villages there were women who remained widows and needed to take things in their own hands to survive and stay sane. They went through a lot during the war and needed to continue living because they had kids to raise.
Basically, after the war ended in 1999, Kosova got independence in 2008 as a country, so Hive is set around 2005-2006, which is when we were under UN administration. We were free from the war and occupation, but we were not a state yet. Of course, a lot of international organisations helped after the war but that can only last as much because soon enough these assistances started to fall and people would get less assistance, it can never last forever, so that’s why Farian and these women had to take things into their hands to survive.
I thought the film’s colour palate seemed to echo the character’s feelings of grief and her struggles but then again, I don’t know whether that’s just Kosovo’s weather?
We really wanted to combine the colour palette of the film as realistic because it’s based on a true story. We really wanted it to be as close to a documentary filmmaking as possible, I thought that was best for the story. We tried to fit the colour palette of these women and how they would dress because as widowed women of course everybody was critical of them working. We don’t usually wear bright colours, we’re Muslim and we don’t really wear black when somebody dies. These women, because they are widowed and don’t have a husband, wearing something colourful might be seen maybe too inviting so they really had to be quite conservative in what they’re wearing.
In terms of culture, these women wore brownish and greyish pallets which are colours I’m used to seeing because brown was something a lot of people wore at that time. Even my town, Krusha is quite grey, so that’s all the colours that I grew up with. Sometimes we did get lucky with the weather, for instance the scene when they put the jars with the family, we timed it for time of the day where the sun is better, but we really wanted that to be the happy moment of the whole family together, so I really wanted that to feel lighter towards the end. This woman really gave me hope and I hope the film will give some hope to people. Yes, a lot of things were intentional, but we were lucky with the weather, I really felt it fit. This is a low budget film, we had to shoot even in times when we didn’t like the sun, but we tried to use it for the story in the best way we could. We shot in June because the actress Yllka could not come in May, in June the Sun is very hard so we usually don’t like shooting then because it’s very hot and the sun doesn’t look good. We had to do it for the actress. I think we did good because I think the most important thing is acting so we tried with DP Alex Bloom to use the hard sun for the story.
That’s so cool. Did you use spun to diffuse the sun to control how the shots were lit?
No, we didn’t. I don’t like using diffusers. When we tried to use softeners or diffusers, there are films I’ve shot that have a specific composition, I was very specific on how I want the shots [to look] and this one I really wanted everything to be very natural. When we used lights, it was very natural source inspired. We used a lot of daylight and tried not use any diffusers. I don’t know for me it just felt wrong and Alex really supported that so I’m grateful and I think it worked for the story.
I feel like Fariah went through these stages of grief or something similar in Hive, like acceptance and trying to cope, barely surviving, etc. Could you talk about how you went about directing (main actress) and your process of writing/directing – it’s a very hard thing to portray.
Yeah no, no. If you mean if she’s going through different stages of change during the film then maybe. It is very hard, I haven’t lost anyone during the war, luckily, but I’ve witnessed quite a lot of things. Together with the actress Yllka Gashi, even when we were rehearsing, we really tried to understand how it really feels to be this woman, we’re not just portraying a woman who’s opening a business successfully but also her having lost her husband and dealing with that. How do you deal with that when you don’t even know where your loved one is and you’re searching for him? How do you go on with life? If you search for bones and they’re not there or search for clothes and he’s not there and then somebody says something and then you have a hope and then you lose the hope.
When I met Fahrije the last time, I met her before the shoot, I asked her, ‘Do you still wait for him? Do you still think he’s going to come back?’ Now we’re talking 20 years after the war and she said, ‘Maybe more rarely, but I still think what if he comes back?’ In my mind, I thought she’d given up. If you still, after 20 years, are wondering, ‘what if he comes back?’ that must be a horrible feeling and that’s what we really tried to understand. Of course, losing someone is always painful but I think this is the worst way of losing someone when you don’t know where they are. Even if they come back one day, it’s still going to be hard for these people, that’s why the trickiest part was also the ending of the film. I don’t know what’s the happy ending for these people. What is a happy solution for these people? If the body comes back it’s going to open wounds and if they come back, it is still going to be hard for all the grief they went through. I really wanted to play with that, she really wants to know but does she really want to know this always the question, she’s fighting to get it over with and I think that’s normal. The father-in-law resists but towards the end they change roles, or we think they change, it’s a little bit open. He wants to know, and we don’t know if she really wants to know or not. This was something I really wanted to play with in her stages of grief because this is the way it is in the real life. One day they are very hopeful the next day they lose hope completely and that must be hard. We tried to subtly play with that throughout the film.
The film has a lot of female characters and the dialogue touches on the patriarchal nature of the society, one conversation that stands out to me is the women talking about who’s going to teach them to drive, someone says it doesn’t matter whether it’s a man or a woman. Can you talk about your scriptwriting and the dynamics of gender?
Well, as I said, for these women it was even harder. My mom used to drive before the war and everything. I drive but there’s still people telling me, especially if there’s a man in the parking lot the try to help me thinking because I’m a woman parking that really annoys me. Besides feeling pressure I’m annoyed when people tell me how to park. I have cameras in my car. [Laughs] I’m a good driver but because it’s a woman driving, one guy one day told me, ‘Do you want me to get the car out? excuse me.’ I hit the car a little bit, but I didn’t hit it because I don’t know how to drive. I was looking at the phone so that was my mistake not because I was a woman. Women were prejudiced for many things especially because the man was not home and so that was an even a bigger weight for them.
These women don’t have a husband and were looked at like what are they doing, where are they going, etc. Of course, they are not used to having men as friends and or talking to them and so they were resistant on being in a car with another man. The biggest challenge if a man is teaching them is they would have to go with a stranger in the car and that will be something that the society would [approve of]. Of course, a lot of things have changed, improved in a lot of aspects and it’s not a big deal now if a woman is driving. Fahrije did a lot of things, her company really changed the mindset of the whole society in that region. I think, of course, when somebody tells me in 2021 ‘do you want me to take the car off for you?’ I think we still have things to work on not just in Kosovo, I think over all over the world.
Oh wow, that’s so recent. Hopefully it changes. One of the most powerful moments was when things were unspoken. How did you go about directing emotion the main actress with the emotion of the character when a lot is unspoken?
We really tried to understand that even when we were rehearsing. Yllka Gashi is a professional actress, and she has a lot of experience, and I knew she’s going to learn the lines. We did some rehearsals on set, reading, but it was a lot of talking about what it feels like to be Fahrije. We talked about what we went through in the war, and we wanted to search deep in our emotions, for us personally how must it feel for Fahrije having to go through all this after the war. We really tried to understand. Even when you meet the real character in person, she really doesn’t give you much emotion, she’s like this strong person. That’s why I really was inspired by her because she was just this strong figure telling you what happened to her all her life, and we really wanted to portray that.
There’s a lot of great films with a lot of dialogue, but we come from a society where we didn’t talk a lot about many things in our lives, we’re not open to talk about feelings. We help each other and we’re always there for each other as a family and everything but when it comes to talking, I have sisters, a brother and my parents are still alive, we’re always helping each other. When we were younger, talking about feelings was rare. There was a sentence said you had to understand, or nothing was said, we kind of understood each other, so that’s something, a communication I grew up with that is the way in the villages. Even when the grandfather is talking to her it’s a short conversation, but they really understand each other, it’s not a long conversation of discovering or revealing everything. For me that’s what was interesting to play on symbolically, I really wanted to portray the real character because that is how she is she doesn’t give you lots on what she’s going through. When I asked her if she ever cried, she was like, ‘Yeah, I cried. I cried every morning and then I wiped out my tears off and then went to work.’ For me that’s the character we really want to portray, sometimes she’s fragile and she breaks because she’s a human being not a superhero. She is a hero; she always finds a way to continue and that was really something we tried to portray with the character, the dialogue and everything.
How did you come to meet the real Fahrije?
Fahrije has a successful business and does a lot of TV stories because people really like her story. This year she opened a big factory so she’s doing well. I heard about her story on TV and went to meet her. I loved her story and found her interesting was her character. When I met her in person it really clicked in me that I really need to put this character on screen and this film must be character driven because of her. She went through a lot during the war, even the script stage and in the edit I had to cut a lot of things because it was too much for a film to handle everything she went through. For me the most important thing was her personality and that’s why I really focused on that. After meeting her in person, I felt it was duty to do represent her strong character on screen because this is a person people need to hear about.
Hive has a lot of strong female characters who are all survivors in a sense, they’re widows, they’re survivors, things are done out of necessity, and this makes the film feel very empowering to me. I wondered about the film from a feminist perspective. The male characters seem to be barriers to the women progressing. For yourself, as a female filmmaker what are your thoughts?
Well in terms of the story, it wasn’t initially [feminist] but when I met Fahrije in person it became like that. Whether that’s for survival or for pure feminist reasons for me, I thought it was an important story and people need to see it because it’s encouraging. We’re not seeing a woman lead character on screen who’s a victim, we’re seeing a woman who is standing for herself, even if that’s to survive. She’s not just sitting and waiting for mercy; she’s doing something about it. For me that was inspiring to just hear when she was telling me, and I hope that it will be for other people who see the film not just for women. There were people who helped her. There were men who helped her and men who did not support her. I wanted to portray all kinds of people and the complex society that isn’t all black and white. Nobody’s well defined, no society’s well defined, there are good people and people who want to stop you in every society whether that’s a man or a woman. We as human beings are complex, so sometimes they’re good but sometimes we do bad things and that’s something I really try to play with in terms of complexity.
As a filmmaker I’m lucky to have a lot of friends, female filmmakers in Kosova. We have great filmmakers who are doing well and being awarded, this year it’s mostly women going to A list festivals. Currently there’s four female films from Kosova circulating in festivals. We produce one or two films, rarely three or four a year so we really have a small, I can’t even call it an industry, where we will produce very few films a year. It’s such a great thing to have 4 films circulating in festivals all by women writer-directors. For me it feels like natural, and I don’t have barriers as a filmmaker anymore because people are used to seeing women and nobody has a problem with that now. It’s less women producers and DP’s but we also have a woman DP who’s shooting a lot of these films. I think people will get used to it that’s why we must give examples even visually, you know, because then people get used seeing different genders, different colours, different kinds of people on and off screen and then maybe one day we don’t have to talk about race and gender we just get used to it and accept human beings as human beings.
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Hive is currently playing at Sydney Film Festival, and On Demand. For screening information, go here.
Interview by Addy Fong.
