SOIL AND WINGS

Synopsis

In a North-Macedonian village called Kanatlar, Ayten and Erduan raise their family, balancing the ancient Bektashi-dervish doctrine with the challenges of modern life and economy. This tobacco-growing valley is home to a few hundred Turks of the Bektashi Sufi order, an 800-year-old branch of Islam that teaches progressive ideas, even by today’s standards. They believe everyone and everything is equal, which gives women freedom and power that many other Muslims find blasphemous.

Ayten and Erduan love each other deeply, but this love is mostly shown through their work for the family. This hard-working couple shows gender equality blooming where you would least expect it – in a rural community of Muslims devoted to religion, family and tradition in one of the poorest regions of the Balkans.

Screener request

Zagreb Dox 2025 / Regional Competition / WORLD PREMIERE

South East European Film Festival Los Angeles

Beldocs 2025 / Serbian Competition Programme / NATIONAL PREMIERE - Best Film, Cinematography and Editing awards

DokuFest 2025 Balkan Dox / Feature documentary Special Mention

My first memory of watching TV dates to Yugoslav wars and media stations airing propaganda against the Muslims of Bosnia. My parents always taught me differently, and a few decades later I moved to Sarajevo to study, made many Muslim friends and researched about relations of Islam and Christianity. I realized our faith is essentially one and the same, and that my personal philosophy was closer to Sufism than anything else.

My doctoral thesis in Bela Tarr’s film.factory school in Sarajevo included creating “Gora”, a feature-length documentary that deals with Slavic-speaking Muslims of Kosovo, who intertwine different traditions in their customs. I created a bridge between our close but isolated peoples by making a film about their unique lifestyle and little-known tradition.

Life of Bektashi Dervishes is another rich, but virtually unexplored theme. Bektashi culture features many interesting and unique aspects, but the most intriguing element is the position of females in their society. We tend to see women’s rights as connected with modernity and developed societies, as something that’s relatively new, so when Western people hear about a traditional, rural, family-oriented society of pious Muslims, they instantly imagine women being subdued and oppressed. I felt the urge to break this stereotype by showing the other side of the coin, where tradition and tolerance coexist.

Soil and Wings explores pantheistic worldviews of Bektashi through powerful imagery of their architecture, rituals and daily routines in an organic way that fits their cannon. In that sense Soil and Wings aims to be ‘a Bektashi film with Bektashis’, and not merely a film ‘about Bektashis’.

Director's statement

Stefan Malešević is a filmmaker and film curator from Serbia, currently based in the Netherlands. He studied filmmaking at the film.factory academy in Sarajevo under the mentorship of Béla Tarr. His documentary Gora (2016) won awards at Beldocs and DokuFest and was screened at Visions du Réel. His debut feature Mamonga (2019) premiered at Karlovy Vary and screened at festivals such as New Horizons in Wroclaw and the Marrakech IFF. He is a member of the European Film Academy and works as the Head of Cinema at the cultural center De Balie in Amsterdam.

Director's biography

Credits

WRITER AND DIRECTOR: Stefan Malešević

CO-WRITER: Viktor Trajanovski

CAST: Ayten Arifoska, Erduan Arifoski, Ceylan Dönmez, Ayduan Arifoski, Duru Dönmez, Beyza Arifoska, Ilkay Arifoski, Dilay Arifoska, Yildiz Arifoska, Güldan Arifoska, Gülçin Arifoska, Dogan Arifoski

CINEMATOGRAPHY: Stefan Malešević

COMPOSER: Branislav Jovančević

SOUND: Bojan Palikuća
RE-RECORDING MIXER: Nikola Medić

EDITORS: Jelena Maksimović, Stefan Malešević

Soil and Wings (2025) - IMDba

FORMAT: Feature-length documentary film

LANGUAGE: Turkish, Macedonian

SUBTITLES AVAILABLE: English, Serbian

LENGTH: 77 minutes

COUNTRIES OF PRODUCTION: Serbia, North Macedonia

PRODUCTION COMPANY: Obol Film

CO-PRODUCTION: Minimal Collective