Hive

After the screening, join us for a discussion co-presented by Facing History and Ourselves.

“An engrossing, utterly classic tale of overcoming adversity.”

—Deborah Young, The Hollywood Reporter

Winner of the Audience Award, Directing Award, and World Cinema Grand Jury Prize at the Sundance Film Festival, Hive is a searing drama based on the true story of Fahrije, who, like many of the other women in her patriarchal village, has lived with fading hope and burgeoning grief since her husband went missing during the war in Kosovo. In order to provide for her struggling family, she pulls the other widows in her community together to launch a business selling a local food product. Together, they find healing and solace in considering a future without their husbands—but their will to begin living independently is met with hostility.

Against the backdrop of Eastern Europe’s civil unrest and lingering misogyny, Fahrije and the women of her village join in a struggle to find hope in the face of an uncertain future.

Panel Details

After the screening, join us for a discussion featuring:

• Marjorie Agosin, Chilean poet, human rights activist, and Wellesley College professor

• Jasmina Cesic, survivor of the Bosnian genocide and author of The River Runs Salt, Runs Sweet

• Laura Tavares (moderator), writer and educator.

Speaker Bios

Marjorie Agosín is a Chilean-American poet, human rights activist, literary scholar and critic. She is Professor of Spanish at Wellesley College. Her work is inspired by the themes of social justice and memorialization of traumatic historical events in the Americas and Europe. She has won several distinguished prizes, including the United Nations Leadership Award for Human Rights and the Dr. Fritz Redlich Global Mental Health and Human Rights Award, given by the Harvard Global Mental Health Trauma and Recovery Program. She is on the Facing History and Ourselves Scholars Board.

Jasmina Cesic grew up in Visegrad, Bosnia, a beautiful town on the Drina River where Muslims and Serbs lived together peacefully. At the beginning of the 1990s, her life was that of a typical teenage girl concerned with school, boys, family, and friends. She married her high school sweetheart, Suljo, after graduation. But Yugoslavia was beginning to unravel, and ethnic hatred brought violence and fear to Jasmina’s once-peaceful town.  Jasmina lost many members of her family to the Serbian campaign of ethnic cleansing against Muslims. Her husband was killed in the same Sarajevo mortar attack that took Jasmina’s right arm. Jasmina came to the United States in 1993, as one of the first Bosnian refugees to seek medical treatment here during the conflict. She learned English, went to school, remarried, and started a family. Her story is one of fear, horror and personal tragedy, and also of kindness, resilience and hope. 

Laura Tavares is a longtime educator with a deep interest in the relationship between the study of the humanities, schooling, and democracy. She began her career teaching middle and high school in New York City and Boston, before joining the staff of Facing History and Ourselves, a global education non-profit which uses the lessons of history to challenge teachers and students to stand up to bigotry and hate. She is currently at work on a new nonprofit startup, the WPS Institute, which creates transformative learning experiences for educators from the highest need schools and communities in the country. She is also a recurring faculty member at Harvard’s Project Zero Classroom Institute and a fellow of the Transatlantic Exchange of Civic Educators. Laura writes about history, current events and education for publications including The New York Times, Educational Leadership, Greater Good Magazine, and Social Education.