The Tale of Silyan

Highlighting the struggles of farmers in Macedonia, director Tamara Kotevska's film showcases Nikola and his family unable to make a profit on one of the farm's best harvests and unable to sell the farm for more than a fraction of its worth due to new governmental policies. After his daughter and her family move away, and Nikola's wife goes with them to help with the children, Nikola finds himself alone. Needing money, he takes a job at the local landfill where he discovers and injured stork who he adopts and nurses back to health helping soothe his loneliness.

Since Nikola doesn't discover the stork until the second-half of the film, and obvious shots of storks and local folktale about a boy turned into a stork were weaved throughout the documentary later, I am curious what the original documentary's planned focus was. Was it set to delve deeper into the farmers' plight and their protests towards the government? Or were the local wildlife always planned to be part of the story, perhaps how economic and agriculture change was affecting them, but Nikola's actions helped bring them to the forefront?

While of interest, I do think the documentary becomes more effective, and more affecting, once Nikola takes the bird under his wing (so to speak) and how that relationship injects some hope back into Nikola's life. The folktale is well-chosen, highlighting the loneliness of a father without a son and a son without a father (as Nikola often remarks about the son who left home never to return to the farm). While there's certainly an aspect of the documentary that feels unnaturally staged, it still provides a story worthy of a couple hours of your time.

• Title: The Tale of Silyan
• IMDb: link