Described as the heart-warming tale of a farmer who saves and befriends an injured white stork in North Macedonia, Tamara Kotevska’s The Tale of Silyan is actually a harrowing, sadly resonant story about survival during an era of increasing wealth disparity. Nikola Conev doesn’t find Silyan until we’re already two-thirds of the way through the runtime; we are first exposed to his and Jana Coneva’s banner crop wasting away due to new government policies that allow buyers to low-ball prices and ruin lives.
The harvest is optimistic. Potatoes. Peppers. Watermelon. Tobacco. It seems this 60-year-old couple are coming into a windfall to sustain them, their daughter, son-in-law, and granddaughter. Their trucks are overflowing with produce en route to the farmer’s market and each takes a crop to sell upon arrival. It’s not just that everyone is trying to haggle them down to nothing, though––there are hardly any buyers in attendance at all. It’s soon learned that the region has quickly gone from 300 farms to 50 and those that remain have been forgotten.
Protests are formed wherein these families decide it’s better to destroy the crops in a public display of anger than give the vultures the satisfaction of stealing their hard work for pennies on the dollar. Their daughter and son-in-law decide to move west to Germany to find more consistent work, and it’s discovered that they’re but the latest to do so, with abandoned land and houses strewn across the country amongst those populated by solitary men with too much pride to simply give up their legacy.
Kotevska wraps this drama within a Macedonian folk tale about a son-turned-stork named Silyan. It’s the perfect allegory for what’s happening to the nation’s farmers on a broad scale, but also for Nikola’s own personal experience of having watched his son leave without so much as calling home for years. Finding that stork in the landfill, he’s ultimately forced to work after everyone leaves places Nikola inside the myth. Rather than rekindling a relationship with his estranged son through the animal as written, Nikola reconnects with nature and heritage.
The documentary proves an inspiring tale of the perseverance of those who refuse to cater to corruption and exploitation while also rejecting the alternative of quitting. Because there’s a point where the latter becomes more expensive than the former. While Nikola could sell off his land for prices that would barely cover the costs of moving to Germany with his family, he might still be able to earn more by working it another season regardless of the current economic climate of his physical health. Why give his destroyers the satisfaction of leaving?
And much like with the director’s previous film Honeyland, the cinematography is absolutely gorgeous. Jean Dakar serves as cinematographer and captures sweeping scenes of storks flying around the area and interacting with the humans below. The close-ups of the birds’ eyes and feet slowly ambling about really seek to humanize them as the story of Silyan slowly unfolds via voiceover in bits and pieces throughout Nikola’s struggle. I love the action shots fading into reveals: tractors driving over smashed produce and Nikola building his Silyan a nest.
Beyond the allegorical nature of the stork’s presence with Nikola, mankind’s hardships trickle down into the birds’ lives, too. Whereas they survived off the fertile land with the humans (following behind plows to scoop up unearthed critters), they now also find themselves hunting for scraps in the wasteland left behind. Nikola must go to the landfill to work and they arrive shortly after migration to search for food. Kotevska mustn’t drive home that truth’s meaning beyond this visual. Our species’ greed has become a threat to life itself.
The Tale of Silyan premiered at the 2025 Toronto International Film Festival.
The post TIFF Review: The Tale of Silyan is an Inspiring Story of Perseverance first appeared on The Film Stage.
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