Directed by Semih Kaplanoglu. Starring Bora Altas, Erdal Besikcioglu Club, Access Cinema, accesscinema.ie, 107 min

YUSEF, A LONELY, unpopular kid with a stammer, mouths every word as his classmate reads aloud from The Lion and the Mouse.He applauds in earnest as the teacher rewards the speaker with a red pin. Inspired by the performance, Yusef eagerly raises his hand, but when the teacher directs him to The Eagle and the Turtle, he can barely get the name of the bird out. His six-year-old peers are momentarily and cruelly amused.

Yusef slinks off home to a concerned mother who “doesn’t know what to do with him” and a father who ekes out a living gathering wild honey from improbably high trees. A series of pretty pastoral tableaux illustrate the painstaking, treacherous nature of dad’s enterprise. Tellingly, Yusef never seems to trip on spoken words while they’re off plundering nectar.

It requires a minor ecological catastrophe to force them apart; the bees have disappeared and dad must make for higher ground. He does not return home when he is expected, nor after that. Mother looks increasingly worried; Yusef wanders through the woods hoping to find him. Birdsong and mulch provide the entirely diegetic soundtrack to his increasingly urgent rambles.

Following on from Egg and Milk, the third instalment of Turkish director Semih Kaplanoglu's autobiographical trilogy is minimal enough to function as a parable of separation anxiety, yet rich in commonplace detail. Beautifully shot scenes from a very traditional existence by the Black Sea slowly coalesce into a meditative ethnography. The boy grasps at the moon's reflection in a night pool, a deer stands frozen in the forest clearing; buckets on ropes and pulleys are carefully lowered from the trees.

Not so very long ago, Honey’s obvious qualities and its Golden Bear win at the 2010 Berlin Film Festival might have secured a major global release pattern. But with fewer arthouse screens at our disposal and more fraught, limited deals in international distribution, it falls to our chums at Access Cinema to pick up the flak.

TARA BRADY