Honey

Honey (Bal, 2010) is Semih Kaplanoğlu's quiet Turkish drama, and you can watch it online on iFILM. Six-year-old Yusuf lives with his parents deep in the forested mountains above the Black Sea. His father gathers wild honey from the tops of tall trees; his mother keeps the home; the boy has just started school and is learning to read.

Everything in Yusuf's world runs through his father. They walk into the woods together chasing bees, and for the child the forest is a place of secrets and dreams he whispers to no one else. Then the bees vanish. With the family's living gone, the father climbs higher and higher after a lost swarm — and one day he doesn't come back. The boy, already mocked for stuttering in class, falls almost completely silent.

This is the closing chapter of Kaplanoğlu's "Yusuf trilogy," filmed backward from adulthood to childhood. There is barely any score or dialogue here — the soundtrack is rain, wind and the breathing of the forest itself. The film took the Golden Bear at Berlin. Slow, hushed cinema for viewers ready to see the world through a child's eyes. Stream Honey (2010) online on iFILM.