‘The Tale Of Silyan’ review: Tamara Kotevska follows ‘Honeyland’ with portrait of Macedonian farmer

Dir: Tamara Kotevska. North Macedonia, USA/UK. 2025. 81mins

A narrative drawn from seventeenth century Macedonian folklore is ribboned, to lyrical impact, via this intimate portrait of a farmer, whose conventional manner of life is threatened by financial pressures in fashionable Macedonia. Tamara Kotevska’s beautiful hybrid documentary The Story Of Silyan shares frequent floor along with her double Oscar-nominated image Honeyland. The movie explores themes of symbiosis with the pure world, disrupted balances and migration. And it focuses on a bond; on this case that of Nikola the farmer and the injured white stork that he nurses again to well being.

A fantastic paean to a gently interconnected ecosystem 

There’s a wealthy, mythic high quality to Kotevska’s storytelling which is heightened by a narration recounting the generations-old story of Silyan, a son who rejected the toil of life as a farmer and was cursed by his father to be was a stork. The aching loneliness felt by the offended father and his estranged bird-son is mirrored by that of Nikola when his daughter, spouse and beloved grandchild are pressured to maneuver to Germany for work and the promise of a greater life.

Kotevska’s filmmaking exists on the poetic, magical realist finish of the non-fiction spectrum. Don’t anticipate an evaluation of agricultural market forces or shifts in Macedonian authorities insurance policies, though the real-life ramifications of these are clear to see. It’s a formidable achievement: a stupendous and gently melancholy paean to a gently interconnected ecosystem disrupted by the pressures of fashionable life in Macedonia. Whereas it’d battle to match Honeyland’s breakout success, this needs to be a pageant favorite and will determine in awards conversations going ahead.

For sturdy 60-year-old Nikola, farming is a household enterprise. Cinematographer Jean Dakar’s unobtrusive and perceptive lens captures the best way that Nikola and his spouse Jana scythe the fields collectively, their actions completely synchronised. There’s a way of celebration because the youngest member of the family, Nikola’s tiny granddaughter Illina, helps with the bricklaying for the second storey extension that may ultimately home her bed room. And the annual watermelon harvest brings the entire clan collectively, organized as a human chain to haul the weighty fruits from area to truck.

Selecting delicately via the fields alongside the farmers, we see the white storks. Otherworldly creatures which are woven into the material of life in the area people, which hosts one of the most important stork populations in Europe, the birds have discovered that the sound of sputtering previous tractors signifies a bounty of meals: frogs, snakes and various small rodents are snatched as much as be fed to the chicks of their haphazard nests. However the steadiness of this mutually useful association is toppling – the farmers discover that costs have plummeted and their crops languish unsold on the wholesale market. In a not remotely delicate piece of symbolism, the clouds collect low within the wide-screen mountain vistas, and thunder sounds ominously.

When Nikola’s daughter and her husband relocate to Germany, Jana goes with them to supply childcare. However Nikola is left behind, attempting to promote off his household land at knockdown costs and eking out a residing driving a bulldozer on the dump. Because the fields lie fallow, the storks comply with the farmers to the straightforward pickings of the dump; many are injured or die because of this.

As with Honeyland, the distinctive attraction of The Story Of Silyan is available in half from the selection of central character. Nikola’s life could also be arduous, his work could also be back-breaking, however he’s a jolly determine, along with his gleeful, child-like humour, bristling white hair and misshapen apology for a hat. However primarily, it’s drawn from the elegant modifying of the wealth of fabric captured by Kotevska and her group. The storytelling is so deft and slick, it nearly feels scripted at instances. However there are specific parts that you would be able to’t dictate upfront, like the just about religious connection that grows between Nikola and the gangly, broken chook that he rescues from the dump, and which, in flip, reaffirms Nikola’s bond with the land.