TIFF 50: The cranes are flying in "The Tale of Silyan"
Wednesday, September 10, 2025 at 9:30PM 
According to Macedonian legend, there was once a boy called Silyan who wished to go far away, leave his village behind, and spread his wings into the world beyond. But when he told his father, the patriarch flew into a rage, cursing the name of the child and his dreams along with it. Answering these paternal furies, the heavens opened above, releasing a mighty force that struck the boy. He didn't die, though. Instead, as the father had decreed, Sylian turned into a stork who could now do as he wanted and leave everything that he knew. But this freedom was not to be an idyll. It was a cursed existence, lonely and unmoored, caught in the space between worlds and belonging to nowhere.
Tamara Kotevska uses this folktale as the jumping start from which her latest exercise soars into the cinematic heavens above. The Tale of Silyan, which was just announced as North Macedonia’s submission for the 98th Academy Awards, marks the director's second feature since she, along with Ljubomir Stefanov, helmed the Oscar-nominated Honeyland...