The Tale of Silyan

Official Oscar Submission to the Academy Awards, Best International Feature, North Macedonia

Oscar-nominated director Tamara Kotevska (Honeyland) beautifully tells the story of a farmer’s relationship to a white stork, interwoven with the folk tales of North Macedonia.

Early reviews for THE TALE OF SILYAN have critics calling it “a triumph” (IndieWire), “captivating, earthbound, airborne and magical” (The Hollywood Reporter), and “exquisite…a beautiful and gently melancholy paean to a delicately interconnected ecosystem disrupted by the pressures of modern life” (Screen International). POV Magazine praised it as “a beauty of a film — a wonder to behold with striking cinematography and poetic storytelling,” while Filmmaker Magazine hailed it as “painstakingly crafted.”

In her 2019 debut, Honeyland, director Tamara Kotevska captured the life of a beekeeper with stunning cinematography and a poignancy that earned her an Oscar nomination. Her latest, The Tale of Silyan, demonstrates that Kotevska’s storytelling gifts have only grown stronger in this whimsical and breathtaking new work set in her North Macedonian home.

We meet the farmers Nicola and Jana during harvest season. Their loving playfulness with each other is rare for an aging couple. But their idyll is threatened as economic forces make family farms unsustainable. While the rest of Nicola’s family goes abroad for work, he’s left alone and turns to caring for a stork with a broken wing. White storks are abundant in the country, and Kotevska and cinematographer Jean Dakar show us these birds in all their majesty.

The film’s title invokes a folk tale about a boy named Silyan who argues with his father and is turned into a stork. The legend has parallels to the experiences of Nicola and his distant son.

As a documentary maker, Kotevska is working in her own register, deploying poetry instead of didacticism. There are visual moments so striking, they could be framed as photographs in a museum. Similarly, her real-life characters are so expressive, you might imagine they’re actors. But these aren’t performances and the dialogue isn’t scripted. We’re just in the hands of a skilled observer. The Tale of Silyan has the power to open our eyes and hearts to lives we’d otherwise miss.

THOM POWERS - Toronto International Film Festival