Kosovar director Blerta Basholli’s first feature, Hive, will be released in France on June 1st.
It has won many awards at major international festivals, including three at the 2021 Sundance Film Festival (Audience Award, Jury Award and Best Director). Shown the same year at Montpellier’s Cinemed, the film won the Antigone d’Or. It is also on the programme of the Bolzano Film Festival, celebrating Albanian and Kosovar films (see our article on this subject).
Blerta Basholli shows us Kosovo through the true story of Fahrije Hoti. Fahrije’s husband disappeared in the Kosovo war. As well as their grief, his family also has serious financial problems. To support themselves, Fahrije starts a small farming business. But in the traditionally patriarchal village where she lives, her project and her ideas of evolving with other women arouse suspicion. Fahrije struggles not only to support her family, but also against a hostile community trying hard to defeat her.
After hearing about Fahrije Hoti on television, the director and the actress Yllka Gashi went to meet her. For both of them her story and the issues it raises hit home, so Basholli decided to make a film about her. As she explains in the press kit, talking about the nation’s traumas is essential: “in order to help society open up, get used to hearing the truth and talk about the things which are not right, the things we’ve lived through. It’s the only way to move forward.”
Blerta Basholli was born in Kosovo in 1983. After studying philosophy and cinema at Pristina University she went to New York in 2008 to continue her training at the Tisch School of Art. Four years later she returned to Kosovo where she has directed three short films, including The Three of Us and Third Entrance.
Source : ASC Distribution
