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“We Put All the Magical Emphasis on the Stork World”: Tamara Kotevska on Her Toronto (and Venice) debuting “The Tale of Silyan”
The Tale of Silyann The Tale of Silyan is the latest painstakingly crafted cinematic endeavor from Tamara Kotevska, co-director of the 2019 Sundance-winning (in three categories) and 2020 Oscar-nominated (in two) Honeyland; it’s a film certain to continue the awards-nabbing streak. Set in the village with the greatest number of white storks in Macedonia, the title refers to a 17th century folktale featuring a rebellious boy named Silyan whose father curses him for wanting to flee the hard work on the family farm — turning him into a stork, condemned to a life of eternal migration.
The title also refers to one of the real-life protagonists of the documentary, a white stork with “strong black wings” and eyes “reminiscent of Egyptian pharaohs” (per Silyan’s participant bio) who’s been injured and abandoned by his family at a landfill. The white stork is subsequently rescued and rehabbed by a human named Nikola, whose own loved ones have left him and their farm to work abroad. It’s an ingenious interweaving of ancient myth and modern-day reality, a melding of past and present seen and heard through nonintrusive cinematography and a soundtrack heavily reliant on nature’s own ambient score. And a beautifully subtle reminder that through protecting our ecosystem we can actually heal ourselves as well.
The week of The Tale of Silyan’s Toronto premiere, following on the heels of Venice, Filmmaker reached out to the globetrotting North Macedonian director (who studied documentary filmmaking in Chattanooga on an exchange student scholarship in 2010), currently in post on her fiction debut Man vs. Flock; and who is set to follow Dolgan mammoth tusk hunters all the way to the northernmost area of the Siberian tundra for her next nonfiction foray.
Filmmaker: Could you talk a bit about the casting process? How did you find and gain the trust of your characters, both human and avian?
Kotevska: I’ve been a documentary filmmaker working with isolated communities and animals for a decade now, so recognizing that someone is the right protagonist is an instinct I have developed over years of shooting.
In terms of gaining trust with humans and animals, in both cases the main answer is “time.” We started this documentary by following storks in Macedonia. My cinematographer Jean Dakar and I were living in a trailer for over a year, traveling from village to village across the country, observing and shooting storks. It took awhile to get close to them. We did a lot of research into the types of drone and camera lenses we would need in order to get the most intimate footage of the storks. Once we found the right equipment, we planned to stay for about a week near a particular nest we were trying to follow; every day we approached closer and closer until they started being comfortable around the equipment. It took a couple of months for Jean to follow the little baby storks with the drone, from the moment they were born to the moment when they flew off, which is how he eventually managed to fly together with them and get that impressive arial footage. But lots and lots of hours of footage were definitely needed in order to get all of those stork shots that are in the film.
Concerning the human family, every documentary filmmaker has their own ways of accessing the protagonists’ lives; it’s the secret craft of individual filmmaking. As for myself, coming from a similar farming family background, it was easy to understand the lives of Nikola and his family. Once I told them about the theme of the film they accepted me, and wanted to share their heartbreaking story with the world.
In fact, for a very long time farmers in Macedonia have been staging protests and trying to raise their voice, but it doesn’t reach too far before they’re shut down by the government. That’s why they loved the idea of making this film together and having the opportunity to express their troubles beyond the borders of our small country.
Filmmaker: How did you develop the score and sound design, which ingeniously incorporates the vocalizations of the storks?
Kotevska: The process of working with the composers Joe (Wilson Davies) and Hun (Oukpark) was as magical as the shooting process. It took a bit less than a year to develop the full score. We spent hours together doing the research; it was crucial for me to send the right references. We started by defining the musical motif of the storks: air instruments and percussion (because the flying and the clacking are the two main attributes of the storks). After we had determined the type of instruments we would be using, we researched what air instruments and percussions come from the Balkans, finally selecting the kaval and okarina (blowing/air instruments) as the most symbolic of Macedonia and the region. And from percussion, we selected a variety of wooden and leather drums that originate from this area. We decided that Silyan must have a very recognizable melody, to remain in people’s heads. And we repeated it a couple of times throughout the film to make it the symbol of Silyan and the stork world.
It was important for us to divide the world of the storks and the world of humans. We decided to use almost no music in the human world; we put all the magical emphasis on the stork world and emphasized the fairytale of Silyan — the magical creature, the human trapped in the stork’s body. We decided to use music in the human world right at the beginning, in the introduction of the family’s happy life that feels almost like a fairytale, when they are all together preparing and harvesting the land – with an abrupt stop to the music once the farm products are being taken to the market and the harsh economic reality starts hitting. In order to emphasize the human world’s roots, it was my idea to take a reference from an old Macedonian folk song.
The third step was for me to send a lot of references to the composer of Macedonian folk songs; eventually we chose an incredibly symbolic song, “Ne Si Go Prodavaj Koljo Ciflikot” (“Don’t Sell Your Land, Nikola”). Even though it’s a love song and has nothing to do with the story itself, it still couldn’t be more symbolic in its title; so the musicians made a perfect composition inspired by this folk song that plays over the harvest sequence, only to metamorphosize a bit later into a sad melody when the family is leaving.
The process of creating the music for this film has been one of my most inspiring experiences. I love treating every aspect in the filmmaking process with such deep research, experimenting and putting so much work into it. It’s how great movies are made.
Filmmaker: I’m also hoping you might discuss the film’s visual aesthetic, which you crafted with your DP/producer Jean Dakar (who you also collaborated with on 2023’s The Walk). How did you aim to keep the “audience in the space between reality and magical realism” through imagery?
Kotevska: Since the story of this film revolves around an old Macedonian folktale, we wanted to create an atmosphere that would immerse the audience right into it. We moved away from a conventional documentary look and began crafting a visual style of the time and space of our characters’ world. Jean has a particular approach of being physically close to the characters to create a feeling of intimacy that can’t be achieved with long telephoto lenses from afar. We spent many months together with Nikola and his family to start breaking the barrier, and for them to allow us to come closer and closer until the moment when the camera became invisible.
A Hidden Life was a great inspiration for me as a director when choosing the camera style for the film. In general Malick is a great inspiration of mine.
Filmmaker: The end credits note that “There was no AI used in the making of this film,” which makes me curious to hear your thoughts on the subject. Why was it important to point this out?
Kotevska: When we began working on this project, AI generated images started to become a thing. It was still very primitive, but yet a little scary to know that with a few words you can generate an image. Then, after two years, we found out about Sora, a program that lets you create hyperrealistic moving images and videos that are hard to distinguish from reality.
In the very near future AI will be able to make films totally from scratch, which is something I’m firmly against. Films are supposed to be created by humans as a powerful tool for expression, and a way of speaking about certain issues we are facing as humanity. Films should serve as a message from a human to a human — a soul to a soul — to have emotional meaning. Films are not supposed to be generically recreated just for the sake of making them.
Documentaries allow us to observe the reality around us and speak about the truths surrounding us. They have the power to change our reality if they are truthful. Documentaries should never be replaced by AI! There would be nothing more wrong than distorting the perception of our reality in this fake way.
Filmmaker: Finally, as a director focused firmly on the topics of migration and nature conservation, what do you hope audiences will take away from the film?
Kotevska: I truly hope that there is enough for every different audience to take away from this film. I hope that adults will enjoy it as much as children will; and that audiences in First World countries will find it meaningful, as Third World audiences would find it healing. I hope that animal lovers will be absolutely mesmerized, and that younger generations fed up with consumerism will find inspiration to make a new start in their lives, somewhere closer to the earth, to nature.
