“We’ll collapse as a society if we forget how our ancestors lived and what their values were”
– The Macedonian filmmaker – twice nominated at the 2020 Oscars – explains the genesis of her latest documentary and lifts the veil on her first fiction feature which she’s just finished shooting
Awarded the Grand Prize in Sundance 2019 and nominated twice at the 2020 Oscars (for Best Documentary and Best International Film) by way of Honeyland [+see also:
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interview: Tamara Kotevska, Ljubomir S…
film profile], Macedonian director Tamara Kotevska is set to be presented twice in the 17th Les Arcs Film Festival: via a screening of her documentary The Tale of Silyan [+see also:
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interview: Tamara Kotevska
film profile] (discovered out of competition in Venice this year, and her country’s candidate for the upcoming Oscars) and within the Work in Progress section thanks to her debut fiction feature, Man vs Flock.
Cineuropa: How did The Tale of Silyan come about, a film interweaving a number of different elements: storks, a family, a particular economical context and a fairy tale?
Tamara Kotevska: I was getting ready to shoot Man vs Flock, the screenplay for which included a symbolic scene involving a stork. At the time, I didn’t know anything about storks. But then the government collapsed and film industry funding in Macedonia was blocked and I couldn’t make the film. I decided not to wait or to lose any time but to make the most of it by carrying out research on how to film storks and where to find them in the country. I was in contact with the Macedonian Ecological Society, who I know really well, and I spoke to a biologist specialising in storks who gave me lots of information and pointed me towards the locations of a hundred stork nests around the country. She also sent me research articles where I learned that the stork population is declining in Macedonia because they live on landfill sites and eat rubbish. I found it fascinating, and I decided to go to these places, nest by nest and on landfill sites, with my director of photography who’s also a producer. We threw ourselves into it without funding and, for a very long time, we invested our own time and resources into the project. We converted an old ambulance so that it had a bed, a kitchen and some cupboards – because, in Macedonia, it’s impossible to find anywhere to sleep in the villages where you find storks – and we hit the road. We visited all the landfill sites where storks came to feed and then we realised it would make a brilliant subject for a documentary. I thought: “OK, let’s make a short documentary”, because I didn’t know whether I’d find enough material for anything longer.
But as we were following the storks, I also found myself on farmland because I wanted to compare storks feeding on landfill sites today with how they’ve usually eaten over the centuries, in symbiosis with farmers. I noticed how similar these two species – storks and farmers – actually are, how they’ve influenced one another over the centuries. So I decided it might be a good idea to also follow farmers, to compare the two. I organised a casting session and I chose Nikola’s family because they’re really charismatic, because they love one another and because the camera loves them too. The daughter of the family also told me that there were going to emigrate soon, which gave me another angle for comparing storks and humans. And then, that summer, the farmers’ protests kicked off and I decided to follow their progress. That was when I realised this film had far more potential than a short film could contain.
The shooting and editing processes took around three years. The fairy tale idea came very late in the day. When Nikola decided to care of a wounded stork and developed a bond with her, I realised that it would fit perfectly with Silyan’s tale, because it was as if it were coming to life before our eyes.
What about the almost lyrical air that’s infused into the film’s strikingly realist style?
We did a lot of research over how we should film the storks. We invested in some very high- quality equipment: a drone, a specially designed lens for filming birds… Given that we were following them from a distance, we couldn’t capture any sound via the drone or via the camera with its long focal lens. So our images were inevitably magical, in a certain respect, and needed more stylisation in the post-production process due to the lack of sound. That’s why the storks give the impression of being creatures who brought magic into human lives.
Your films are firmly anchored in an almost archaic rural world, contrasting with our hyper-capitalistic modern world. Why are you so interested in characters such as the beekeeper in Honeyland or Nikola, the farmer?
Both films are set in Eastern Macedonia, only one hill apart from one another. I’ve always liked those kinds of characters who’re still attached to certain indigenous modes of survival. They’re still in their raw form. They haven’t really been affected by our consumer society or by capitalistic pressure. I think these kinds of individuals are at risk of dying out. And I feel that once they disappear entirely from our planet, we’ll have lost something really important. Because we can’t survive solely on capitalism or consumerism. As a species, we need lots of other things. We’re social beings. We’ll collapse as a society if we forget how our ancestors lived and what their values were.
What is your new movie and first fiction feature film, Man vs Flock, about?
I’d started doing some research for a documentary at a time when the Chinese had just started building a motorway in Macedonia. It’s the most expensive government project in history, and it’s still not finished, which is stirring up a lot of controversy. I spoke with lots of local people, pulled together some testimonials and spoke with lots of investigative journalists, but I wasn’t able to properly explore the subject via a documentary because none of the protagonists wanted to speak publicly on this subject: not the institutions because of corruption and censorship, or the locals in the region, or the Chinese workmen. So I used it for inspiration and I created my own story – which isn’t entirely factual – using the testimonials I’d gathered. The main thrust of the story is that the government is using the construction of this motorway to hide an illegal landfill site, which is very common in Macedonia: an enormous project with foreign investment can conceal a whole range of other illegal projects. But it’s also a source of family conflict because lots of families are divided between young people who get jobs out of it and an older generation who don’t want to leave their land. Filming and editing are now finished, but we still have the entire post-production process to work on.
What next? A documentary or a fiction film?
I’m working on a documentary which is set in Siberia. We already shot there for a month in summer 2024. It’s the most northerly point on the planet where you still find humans. We’re shooting with the Dolgan people and we’re exploring the changes that have taken place in this tribe, who used to herd reindeer but who now spend their time looking for mammoth tusks.
(Translated from French)
