An emotional film story about two generations of a family caught up in the civil war. After the “Storm”, the estranged son from Belgrade embarks on an action to rescue his father who remained on Velebit. During the cathartic journey, they realize that they are actually saving each other with their lost love.
The script is based on Slobodan Despot’s book, Le Miel, published for Parisian publishing house Gallimard. The novel MED was published in France
In 2013 and the following year, he won several awards, including the readers’ award at the Festival of European Literature (2014). In Serbia the book is translated and published the following year (Geopetika, 2014).
NIKOLA (65), lives in seclusion in his cabin on the slopes of Velebit, where his closest friends are a donkey and the bees he grows and makes honey. There he finds the fall of Krajina. Not knowing what awaits him in the village and the condition of his house, Nikola decides to stay there. In parallel, his son VESKO (40, once successful economist, now unemployed) who lives with his wife SONJA (doctor, 35) in Belgrade, he follows the events on TV and fears what will happen to his father, but also to the younger one brother DUŠAN (35) and his family, considering that Dušan is in “elite units” somewhere in Croatia. Dušan, on the other hand, manages to pack up his family and come to Belgrade, but he was unable to find his father. The brothers, with the help of their wives, go in search of their father through non-governmental organizations and lists of refugees, but it seems as if the old man has fallen into the ground. And just when he hopes sank and Dušan already wants to bury his father, even though they don’t know where his corpse is, Nikola reports that he is alive and that he has finally come down from the mountain.
Since Duško is not allowed to set foot on Croatian soil, Vesko takes it upon himself to go after the father With the help of Sonja’s medical connections, he reaches a certain Mihael Lang (45), a translator and adviser at the UN, who helps him reach his father through the surrounding roads and bring him to Belgrade. Already at the first border, Vesko’s determination and courage decline, and are replaced by fear – where is he actually headed, who is the man he is traveling with and will he return alive? However, with a nice but inscrutable German, and through a series of “edge” situations, Vesko manages to reach his father. Only that, it turns out, was the easy part of the journey. Vesko can barely get his father to go with him to Belgrade, and Nikola’s condition is that they save the bees and take them to friends all the way in Slovenia. Vesko hardly agrees to it – but it turns out that the honey from those hives will save them on the way to Belgrade and open up a lot for them.
the door. Through a series of bizarrely funny situations on the road, father and son solve problems they hadn’t talked about before – Vesko hadn’t visited his father for years and Nikola never saw or met his grandchildren. Both of them are partly to blame for that, and now everything that they didn’t tell each other is coming to light. The conflict between father and son does not end even when they arrive safely in Belgrade and when the family is at home together – Nikola cannot live in the city, he wants to move to Fruška Gora and keep making honey.
This very honey – will open a new chapter for the whole family and make them all build their lives with more empathy, compassion and love – even in a country where it seems that there is no place for such people.
