“The Tale of Silyan” tells a heartwarming and interesting story of the Storks of Macedonia and their relationship to the citizens of the land. The film parallels the myth named The Tale of Silyan. The Tale of Silyan is a Macedonian folktale about a man who transforms into a stork and wanders the world for seven years before returning home. He is forever changed by the journey he takes.

Synopsis: From the Oscar-nominated director of “Honeyland” comes a poignant and visually arresting story set in the heart of rural Macedonia. Nikola, a farmer grappling with the harsh realities of new government policies, finds himself unable to sell his land or crops. When his family leaves in search of a better life abroad, Nikola takes a job as a landfill attendant, where he encounters the injured white stork Silyan. As he nurses the bird back to health, an unlikely bond forms between man and animal. The result is a deeply moving film that touches on climate change, economic migration, resilience and the quiet power of connection.

Director, producer Tamara Kotevska and producer, cinematographer Jean Dakar shared their experiences making of the movie that is close to their roots. Kotevska connects with the farmers because her family is from the area.

“I also come from a farming family background. My ancestors were living in these villages that are now fully abandoned,” she said. “The first story I ever heard was the Tale of Silyan, which really also shaped my life and the way I think…In many ways, maybe it is the reason why I constantly kind of come back to Macedonia to make documentaries there and just the path takes me there no matter how far I fly and how many countries I will go with my films. So in that sense I do think that we have a certain obligation as artists artists to use our art and our creativity as a tool to bring closer the issues to people.”

For the beautiful cinematography, Dakar spent day in and day out to capture the amazing images of the Storks in their natural habitat. “The goal [to capture footage] is to stay for days until we actually managed to capture that one little moment,” Dakar said. “A lot of the material that we ended up capturing, obviously, well, what you see in the film is just the tip of the iceberg. To get to that point of understanding their behavior and even individual characters, it took a lot of time just sitting and observing and researching, writing down everything in our journal as to what times they tend to fly away, what times competition would happen between other storks…and the actual filming of it was maybe like 10% of what we were actually doing when we were filming the storks.”