--- name: "Tamara Kotevska" canonical: "https://film.one/person/tamara-kotevska" roles: ["Director","Writer"] born: "9 August 1993" reviewed_on_fi1m: 1 updated: "2026-09-17T05:37:14.963007+00:00" licence: "© Fi1m Ltd. Written by AI under a human editor; checked against sources before publication. Quote with attribution and a link to the canonical URL." --- # Tamara Kotevska Director and writer. Born 9 August 1993 in Prilep, Pelagonia, Macedonia [now North Macedonia]. ## Details - **Work:** Director, Writer - **Born:** 9 August 1993, Prilep, Pelagonia, Macedonia [now North Macedonia] - **Elsewhere:** https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q72083389, https://www.imdb.com/name/nm9393813/, https://www.themoviedb.org/person/2187555 ## Streaming the US now - **Tubi:** [*Honeyland*](https://film.one/film/honeyland.md) (82) For United States; add `?region=XX` for another country. ## Fi1m on Tamara Kotevska > Tamara Kotevska's documentaries are made by staying in rural Macedonia long enough for the people and their animals to do something, and in *Honeyland* the waiting produced a real film. Our only worry is how tidily she cuts what she finds. A woman climbs to a crack in a cliff in the hills of North Macedonia, lifts the honeycomb out with her bare hands, takes half, leaves half, and tells the bees so out loud. That is *Honeyland* (2019), and it is also the whole of Tamara Kotevska's method: find someone whose life has a rhythm, stay until the rhythm shows, and do not talk over it. There is no narration, no interview, no caption. She and her co-director Ljubomir Stefanov had been there long enough that when a family arrived next door with a caravan, a herd of cattle and a great many children, the camera was already running. She trained in documentary at the Faculty of Dramatic Arts in Skopje and made *Lake of Apples* (2017) with Stefanov before *Honeyland*, which began as a film about a river and turned into one about a beekeeper. Since then she has worked alone: *The Walk* (2023) follows a giant puppet across Europe as a stand-in for refugees, and *The Tale of Silyan* (2025) lays a Macedonian folktale over the story of a farmer and a rescued stork. She is now preparing a fiction debut, *Man vs Flock*, and a documentary in Siberia. Her own account of how she works is the plainest we have heard from a filmmaker: "If you're long enough with your topic, fascinating things happen." What the patience buys her is fairness. The Sams in *Honeyland* could have been villains and are not, because Kotevska and Stefanov filmed Hussein Sam long enough to show a man with mouths to feed and a buyer leaning on him before they showed the damage he does. We have not often been made to root for and against the same family in one film, and we were, and it was uncomfortable in a way we still think about. Hatidzhe Muratova teaching the children and scolding the parents, glad of the company and wary of it, is the kind of scene no script produces. The film's case about taking more than half is made entirely through what people do with their hands. The patience has a cost, and it is in the editing. *Honeyland* is cut to play like a drama, with a plot, a turn and a reckoning, and it hides its seams so well that we started to wonder what had been left on the floor to make the shape so clean. Which makes the fiction debut the interesting test. A director whose best tool is waiting is about to work from a script, where nothing arrives unless she writes it down first. We would rather she went back to the hills. We will watch either. ## Biography Tamara Kotevska is a Macedonian filmmaker and director. She was born on 9 August 1993 in Prilep, North Macedonia, and graduated from the Faculty of Dramatic Arts at Ss. Cyril and Methodius University in Skopje, with an emphasis in documentary film. She is best known for co-directing and co-writing the documentary *Honeyland* (2019) with Ljubomir Stefanov. The film, which follows a female wild beekeeper in rural North Macedonia, premiered at the Sundance Film Festival where it won three awards. It received Academy Award nominations for Best Documentary Feature and Best International Feature Film. Kotevska has directed other works including the short *Lake of Apples* (2017, co-directed), *The Walk* (2023) and *The Tale of Silyan* (2025). *Sources: en.wikipedia.org, imdb.com, povmagazine.com, oak1.the-numbers.com.* ## On Fi1m (1) - *Honeyland* (2019), Fi1m 82, Director, Writer — [page](https://film.one/film/honeyland.md) --- © Fi1m Ltd. Written by AI under a human editor; checked against sources before publication. Quote with attribution and a link to the canonical URL. Canonical: https://film.one/person/tamara-kotevska