Quartile rating: 7/10 · 1 rating
With dazzling nature photography, Academy Award®–nominated director Markus Imhoof (The Boat Is Full) takes a global examination of endangered honeybees — spanning California, Switzerland, China and Australia — more ambitious than any previous work on the topic.
More Than Honey is elevated primarily by its stunning macro and close-up cinematography of bees in flight, inside hives, and during pollination — genuinely world-class nature photography that earned it widespread acclaim. The documentary's global scope (California almond farms, Swiss mountain beekeepers, Chinese hand-pollination, Australian wild bees) gives the narrative a broader canvas than typical bee docs, though the structural storytelling remains fairly conventional for the genre. Acting is largely irrelevant in a documentary context, with human subjects appearing as interview subjects of variable charisma. Novelty is moderate — the bee-colony-collapse subject was well-trodden by 2012, but Imhoof's personal thread (his grandfather's beekeeping legacy) and international breadth add some distinction. The ending gestures toward hope via Australian wild bees but doesn't deliver a fully satisfying resolution, leaving the film's conclusion slightly open-ended rather than impactful.