Captivating Doc from ‘Honeyland’ Helmer

In her previous documentaries, Tamara Kotevska has examined changing times and dying traditions (the vérité Honeyland, which she directed with Ljubomir Stefanov) and interwoven fairy-tale whimsy with political urgency (The Walk, a plea for compassion for the world’s refugees). She manages to incorporate elements of all of the above in her third feature, and she does so with admirable concision. An absolute charmer, The Tale of Silyan is an affecting look at the human-avian bond, with all its mysteries, warmth and ungainly practicalities.

Part nature film, part parable, part ground-level snapshot of downward-spiraling economies, Kotevska’s documentary is set in the village of Češinovo, where farmers, whose numbers have been dwindling, coexist with the largest white stork population in North Macedonia. With masterly widescreen cinematography by Jean Dakar, seamless editing by Martin Ivanov, an evocative and multitextured score by Joe Wilson Davies and Hun OukPark, and no AI, the doc moves between sweeping landscapes and intimate exchanges. Some of its most breathtaking sequences focus on the impossibly elegant birds and their huge nests perched on rooftops, church towers and power poles.

The centuries-old Macedonian folktale that shapes the doc involves a farmer’s son, Silyan, who’s caught between two worlds after his angry father’s curse turns him into a stork. The real-life Češinovo farmer at the center of the present-day action is 60-year-old Nikola Conev, a robust and hardworking man with a youthful, bright energy. Nikola’s wife, Jana, is a fine match for him in terms of vitality and strength, and they take time for playful flirting as they work the land he grew up on.

With their daughter, Ana, and son-in-law, Aleksandar, they joyfully prepare their harvest of potatoes, peppers and watermelons. But their feelings of accomplishment and abundance are dashed when they confront new realities at the wholesale markets, where merchants and the government have reset the playing field with reduced offers and tightened standards. Left with tons of unsold produce, the village’s angry farmers band together in protest, setting up a blockade on the city’s main road and splattering it with their wares.

The dwindling prospects lead Ana and her husband, like many of the region’s younger people, to move to Germany for work. And, like many in that transplanted generation, they’re shocked to find themselves shelling out a significant portion of their earnings for childcare, and quickly summon Grandma to join them in Deutschland to tend to their toddler daughter.

Some of the film’s most delightful yet pointed sequences follow Nikola and his good friend Ilija, who’s in similar circumstances. Together they traipse around the village armed with Ilija’s new metal detector, searching for gold in houses abandoned by people seeking opportunities in Western Europe. The two men share a down-to-earth gallows humor, and also a gentleness: When they find a dead stork at the landfill where they’ve gotten jobs driving bulldozers — one of many birds succumbing to whatever toxic refuse they shouldn’t be eating — the men take time to bury it and put up a cross.

And when Nikola rescues a stork with an injured wing — the folktale’s Silyan in the flesh — Ilija is his partner in the project of making the bird comfortable and happy. A visit to a vet in the city, who keenly deduces that Silyan doesn’t like cat food, is a deadpan gem of a scene.

Tethered to his family by video calls, Nikola is an attentive and committed caretaker for Silyan. The depth of their connection hits with a tender pang when he brings the bird in from the rain one evening, a scene that Kotevska and Dakar frame beautifully, its power straightforward and unadorned. Nikola’s growing attachment to Silyan — the metaphoric exiled son and, in the here and now, much more than that — spurs his recommitment to the land and the work that have defined his life. “Father,” Silyan despairs in the old fable, “are we destined to die and never reconcile?” Kotevska’s fine film dares to hope not.