Honeyland documents the life of Hatidže Muratova, a Macedonian beekeeper of Turkish descent, who lives in the village of Bekirlija in the municipality of Lozovo. She is one of the last keepers of wild bees in Europe. Due to its location in a secluded mountain, the village has no access to electricity and running water. Hatidže lives with her 85-year-old, partly blind and bedridden mother Nazife, who is completely dependent on her daughter. Hatidže earns a living by selling honey in the country's capital Skopje, which is four hours away from the village. The atmosphere in the village changes when the nomadic rancher Hussein Sam arrives with his wife Ljutvie, their seven children, and their imported domestic animals. Initially, Hatidže maintains good relationships with the family and spends time playing with the children. In need of money, and inspired by Hatidže's way of earning money, Sam takes an interest in wild beekeeping himself. Hatidže instructs him on collecting honey and provides him with several bees so Sam can start his own colony. Despite his initial success, one of Sam's customers demands more honey than his bees can produce. Sam disregards Hatidže's advice to always leave half of the honey for his bees and proceeds to sell the entire stock of honey. This leads to Sam's colonies attacking Hatidže's during the resource-scarce winter. Hatidže scolds Sam for ignoring her advice and her bee colony collapses. Soon after, her mother dies. As the nomadic family decides to move to another village, Hatidže remains alone in Bekirlija.

Werner Herzog found a kindred spirit in the German-American Navy pilot and Vietnam War veteran Dieter Dengler. Like Herzog, Dengler grew up in a Germany reduced to rubble by World War II, and Dengler's stories of hunger and deprivation in the years after the war echo similar stories from Herzog's past. Dengler recounts an early memory of Allied fighter-bombers destroying his village and says he decided he wanted to be a pilot after seeing one of these pilots fly past his house. At the age of 18, Dengler emigrated to the United States, where he served a two-year enlistment in the United States Air Force. Frustratingly, he was unable to gain a pilot's slot in that service, so he left the Air Force, attended college, and then joined the Navy. After completing flight training, he was assigned as a Douglas A-1 Skyraider pilot in Attack Squadron 65 aboard the aircraft carrier USS Constellation. In 1966, Dengler served aboard USS Ranger with Attack Squadron 145. At the time, the squadron was equipped with the Douglas AD-6/A-1H Skyraider, a single-engine, propeller-driven attack plane. On the morning of 1 February, Lieutenant Dengler launched from Ranger with three other aircraft on an interdiction mission near the Laotian border. Visibility was poor due to weather, and upon rolling in on the target, Dengler and the remainder of his flight lost sight of one another. Dengler was the last man in and was hit by anti-aircraft fire. He was forced to crash-land his Skyraider in Laos. Dengler was taken prisoner of war by the Pathet Lao and then turned over to soldiers of the Army of North Vietnam. After a period of torture and starvation spent handcuffed to six other prisoners in a bamboo prisoner-of-war camp, Dengler escaped. He was subsequently rescued after being spotted by United States Air Force pilot Eugene Deatrick. The bulk of the middle of the film consists of footage from a trip Herzog took with Dengler back to Laos and Thailand to recreate his ordeal three decades after the fact. Herzog hired locals to play the part of the captors and had Dengler retrace his steps while describing his experiences. A postscript consisting of footage from Dengler's funeral in 2001 was later added to the film. Herzog subsequently directed Rescue Dawn, a feature film based on the events of Dengler's capture, imprisonment, escape, and rescue. That film, starring Christian Bale as Dengler, was released on 24 July 2007.

Riding Solo is a film about filmmaker Gaurav Jani's solo motorcycle journey from Mumbai to one of the remotest places in the world, the Changthang Plateau in Ladakh, bordering China. Jani was a one-man camera crew unit who loaded his Royal Enfield Bullet 350CC Motorcycle (Loner) with 300 kilograms (660 lb) of equipment/supplies and set off on a journey to one of the world's most difficult terrains.