The Tale of Silyan
(North Macedonia, 81m)
Dir. Tamara Kotevska
Programme: TIFF Docs (North American premiere)
Tamara Kotevska’s The Tale of Silyan is a marvel of symbiotic artistry. The filmmaker, best known for the Academy Award nominated documentary Honeyland, gracefully crafts another deftly poetic meditation on humanity’s inextricable bond with the natural world. What’s exciting is how skillfully she intertwines an ancient folk tale about a stork with the real-life struggles of a subsistence farmer in modern day North Macedonia. Kotevska transforms an observational documentary into an enchanting experience of love and healing, and ultimately, an emblem of resilience.
As the film begins, a voiceover relates the seventeenth century Macedonian folk tale of a young man, Silyan, who becomes a stork after his father curses him for not wanting to work on the family farm. As in many parts of Europe, storks hold a mythical place in North Macedonian culture, and the country has one of the largest populations. Not only are they believed to bring luck (and babies!) but they are intricately connected with the farming process.
This ancient legend forms the backbone of the film and progresses alongside the chronicle of Nikola, the jovial patriarch of a farming family. In her structuring of the film, Kotevska draws out the themes of migration and environmental change that come into play.
Nikola’s life on the farm is somewhat idyllic. His loving wife, Jana, is always by his side in the fields. They are often like teenagers in love as they play there between tasks. Unlike Nikola’s son, who fled the farming life and the country to seek a different, supposedly easier life, his daughter, Ana, and her family remain loyal. The son does not appear in the film, although his presence hangs ominously throughout. But Ana’s toddler daughter is adorably getting into everything around the household, so her presence seems to temper any of the pain that lingers.
Everything changes after the family is unable to sell their crops due to strict government regulations. With the country’s economy suffering, the government has imposed tight restrictions that are particularly difficult for the farmers. Nikola and his neighbours pose for the camera with their bountiful yet apparently unsellable produce after being rejected at the market. The viewer watches as these food items instead go to landfills to rot and fill the bellies of the storks.
The famers protest in the street to no avail, and we watch the family worry about getting by. Farming is proving to be unsustainable for them, as it has for a great many others. Ana and her family decide to move to Germany to seek paying jobs. When Jana has to go as well, to look after the child, Nikola is left alone. He refuses to sell the land he has worked on all his life for the low prices that people are offering. He bands together with his best friend, another abandoned patriarch, to fight off the loneliness.
The continuing saga of Silyan the stork’s woes has been intercut throughout developments in Nikola’s life. In the tale, he too is lonely and longs for a reunion with his father, especially after he migrates south for the winter and returns. Kotevska achieves greatly nuanced and profound connections using an editing strategy that is quite rigorous at times but in fact functions to make developments in each story act as a mirror of or accent on the other. To the film’s credit, it is never overly heavy handed, always subtle. Her strategy suggests more than it declares.
A great deal of the film’s emotional power stems from the cinematography, with shots carefully composed as if plucked from a fantasy world. Cinematographer/ producer Jean Dakar showcases his own interest in environmental and sociopolitical issues in the ways that he fixes his gaze on both the avian and human subjects in the film. Not just an observer, his framing of both bird and farmer is carefully crafted. He is not always going for realism in what he captures; he is instead adding an impressionistic look to this often-fable-like story. He treats the people and the natural world with great sensitivity.
Kotevska and Dakar elevate the experience of an observational documentary beyond conveying everyday realities. They impart ancient, universal truths beyond the film’s events. The genius of this documentary is how it makes something improbable like a fairytale come to life and make sense in a modern context.
