TIFF 2025 Documentary Highlights: The Tale of Silyan, Love+War, and The Balloonists

The 2025 Toronto International Film Festival (TIFF) featured an ambitious schedule packed with premieres and screenings, including several notable documentaries that offered unique perspectives on human resilience, journalism, and exploration. Among them were Tamara Kotevska’s “The Tale of Silyan,” Chai Vasarhelyi and Jimmy Chin’s “Love+War,” and John Dower’s “The Balloonists.”

The Tale of Silyan
Directed by Tamara Kotevska, the Oscar-nominated filmmaker behind Honeyland, The Tale of Silyan is a lyrical and intimate story about Nicola, a farmer in Macedonia, who discovers an injured stork. Left alone when his partner Jana departs in search of income, Nicola decides to care for the bird himself. The film intertwines this tale with a Macedonian folk legend about a boy transformed into a stork, capturing themes of survival, mythology, and the struggles of people working the land. With breathtaking cinematography of storks in flight and a poignant look at rural life, Kotevska once again delivers a film of quiet beauty and symbolic depth.

Love+War
Oscar-winning directors Chai Vasarhelyi and Jimmy Chin (Free Solo) turned their lens on the life of Pulitzer Prize-winning photojournalist Lynsey Addario. The documentary follows Addario as she documents the war in Ukraine, while also grappling with the emotional toll of leaving her family behind. Love+War is part bio-doc and part meditation on the sacrifices of journalism, recounting Addario’s experiences in conflict zones like Sierra Leone, Libya, and the Middle East. The film underscores the increasing dangers journalists face in an era of disinformation and hostility, balancing Addario’s professional courage with her role as a mother. One especially powerful scene features her 10-year-old son pleading with her not to leave again, highlighting the personal cost of bearing witness to global conflict.

The Balloonists
Directed by John Dower, The Balloonists recounts the remarkable journey of Bertrand Piccard and Brian Jones, who in 1999 became the first to circumnavigate the globe in a hot air balloon. While the film occasionally suffers from a slow pace and over-reliance on sound bites, it shines in its archival footage of the competition and its detailed exploration of jet streams, navigation, and survival in the skies. The contrasting personalities of Piccard and Jones add dramatic tension to the retelling, with the film ultimately offering a fascinating, if somewhat dry, glimpse into a historic aviation feat.

Together, these documentaries highlight the range of human endeavor: caring for fragile life in The Tale of Silyan, risking everything to tell the truth in Love+War, and pushing the limits of exploration in The Balloonists. Each film, in its own way, reflects the enduring human desire to connect, to witness, and to achieve.