Ibrahim is a true film hero. The Kurdish immigrant leads his struggle for a dignified life with stoic perseverance and affable charm. For political reasons he was forced to start a new life far from his roots and his culture and faced with great existential loss. This provides the material for a compelling film narrative. The director, Mano Khalil, has found the right form, the right images and the right protagonist - whose tragedy is perhaps escapable. Ibrahim is a beekeeper and as he fled through the Turkish mountains this was useful camouflage. After his emigration to Switzerland, he was obliged to do menial jobs. Now he needs to prove his eligibility for a pension. The geopolitical coincidence that Ibrahim came to live in Switzerland is fortuitous for the film's structure. It is an ideal country for drawing topographical comparisons with Turkey and making connections between the most extreme cultural contradictions. The director, Mano Khalil, never loses sight of his hero's great capacity for emotion. On the contrary, it becomes the central motif of this highly humanitarian and humanistic documentary film, in which we learn, incidentally, that bees don't just provide honey but also inspiration.
