15 July 2011
Larushka Ivan Zadeh / The Metro
Honey

This award-winning portrait of childhood is a lovely, bittersweet tale.

Part of a trilogy by Turkish writer/director Semih Kaplanoglu, it explores the perceptions of six-year-old Yusuf (captivating Bora Altas) and his schoolboy joys and woes as he experiences love, loss and the mysteries of life.

Yusuf is just learning to read and write but his severe stammer humiliates and isolates him. Only with his father, Yakup (Erdal Besikçioglu), his hero, teacher and confidant, does Yusuf speak fluently.

Yakup is a woodsman and beekeeper, one of the last of the honey gatherers who climb to treetop hives in search of prized, elusive black honey.

When the bees disappear, Yakup leaves the village to search an more remote area, leaving lonely Yusuf struggling to understand the world himself.

Kaplanoglu presents the setting, the magnificent forests of north-east Turkey near the Black Sea coast, like an enchanted fairy tale land that provides sanctuary and comfort for the little boy in his tender, touching and terrible crises. Affecting and poetic.