“The Tale of Silyan” – environmental and social destruction, or why people emigrate5 min read
What happens to a society when all young people leave? Tamara Kotevska’s new film, The Tale of Silyan, tries to give an answer to that question as it is felt acutely in rural North Macedonia.
The last Macedonian census exposed that the population of the country had decreased by 9% compared to 2002, instead of the expected growth, mostly due to emigration. More than 200 villages were totally depopulated in the 20 years between this census and the previous one, in a country of (now) less than 2 million inhabitants. In the rural areas it is mostly youngsters who leave, usually first to the capital Skopje and then often abroad. More than 90% of young people in North Macedonia would like to move abroad. Why do we see such an exodus?
The Tale of Silyan, a documentary by Tamara Kotevska (Oscar-nominated for Honeyland, co-directed with Ljubomir Stefanov), is shot in Češinovo, a typical rural village in the Balkans. A handful of creatively built houses, ringed by a patchwork of farming plots on flat ground, enclosed by imposing mountains. The hamlet maintains the largest population of storks in North Macedonia, nested on top of electricity poles, roofs, and trees.
The protagonist, Nikola, tills the land here with his family, and harvests practically everything that North Macedonia has to offer: peppers, grapes, potatoes, watermelons, and tobacco. He built a new first floor on top of his house, for his son and his wife and kids to move into. Seemingly, the traditional life in a Balkan village.
The life of a farmer is difficult. After a year of hard work, Nikola and his family are squeezed by low prices, dictated by oligarchic interests, and they cannot sell most of their harvest. After farmers’ protests that don’t manage to change the situation, they are forced to throw away the rotting produce. The reality is that this lifestyle in North Macedonia is no longer sustainable. The country is struggling with huge levels of unemployment, overwhelming corruption, low wages, and an increasing cost of living.
It is then understandable that people see no future in (rural) North Macedonia. In The Tale of Silyan, Nikola’s son and his young family move to Germany in search of a better life. Even his wife Jana follows later to take care of the kids when the parents work. The 60-year old Nikola, like a “true” Balkan man, cannot even cook, and is left to his own devices.
The titular Silyan is a reference to a Macedonian fable about a young man who works on his parents’ farm. Dreaming about a bigger future, he plans to travel abroad. His father curses Silyan for abandoning him and Silyan changes into a stork. Living like a bird, Silyan is forced to migrate with the seasons. Finally returning to his home village, he visits his father, now old and lonely, and the two reconnect. Silyan’s father tills the land, and Silyan follows the plow, eating the vermin – a symbiotic relationship that really exists between storks and farmers in North Macedonia.
Left alone, Nikola is forced to work on a local landfill. There he finds a stork with a broken wing, which he takes care of. Feeling abandoned by his family, and humiliated as a man because he cannot offer his kids a good life, he builds a strong bond with the bird he names Silyan. The parallel with the fable is clear. Kotevska knows how to find exactly the right shots to contextualize her story in Macedonian rural society: Nikola makes a nest for Silyan in an abandoned school.
Many scenes will look familiar to those who have visited Balkan villages. Elderly people video calling their grandkids abroad. Elderly people taking on dubious jobs to survive. The typical black humour between Nikola and his friends. Land that has been in possession for generations is sold at bottom prices. Plots lay fallow. Desperate farmers even set fire to their decades-old orchards for insurance money: “How can their hearts allow it?” Jana asks.
Kotevska was initially interested in storks. The birds were getting sick because of declining rates of farming, forced to eat from landfills instead. While filming, she encountered Nikola and his family, emblematic of the situation of the Macedonian countryside.
As Kotevska says herself, she is interested in “rich” people – meaning, like Nikola’s family, rich in love, in touch with nature, humble and in good relations with each other. She blends the trials and tribulations of the family, torn apart by forces outside of their power, with the lot of the storks. During the farmers’ protests, the characteristic chatter of storks swells as if in anger and becomes part of the soundtrack.
Nikola and the storks are ‘sent to the landfill’, a place of environmental destruction that literally makes them ill. In a sense, Kotevska connects the fate of the villagers with the fate of the birds, and she is fearful of a future where both are destroyed. Environmental destruction is paralleled with social destruction. The more sustainable small-scale farming techniques, tied to the life of storks, are becoming completely untenable. The filmmaker makes the choice to not go for a “realistic” style, instead preferring a more cinematic approach that hits on an emotional level.
If these themes in broad strokes feel familiar to wherever you are, that is no coincidence. The Tale of Silyan might be focused on North Macedonia, and feel very familiar across the rural Balkans, but the struggles felt in Češinovo can be applied to many rural regions across the planet.
Indeed, Kotevska sees the film as a critique of capitalism, whose effects are felt across the globe. In her view, capitalism destroys these farming communities economically and the surrounding environment more broadly. This leads to a lack of opportunities, creating an exodus of youngsters, which is in turn fueling a social destruction in the countryside.
Tackling such broad themes is no small task, and The Tale of Silyan does not always succeed in connecting its disparate ideas smoothly. In that regard, Honeyland was thematically stronger. Nevertheless, The Tale of Silyan is intuitively and emotionally strongly impactful thanks to its cinematic approach to such a painful subject. A society without young people is one without a future, but Kotevska still opts for a hopeful ending. Let us hope she is right.
