Branko Gapo (1931-2008) was only twenty-five years old when he made Pticite doagjaat in 1956. Equally stage director and screenwriter, the Macedonian filmmaker was to shoot six fictional feature films, including Macedonian Saga in 1993. But it was by directing documentaries that he began his professional career in the 1950s. After World War II, Macedonia became a federal republic of Yugoslavia; it produced a documentary cinema intended to testify to the culture and identity of the Macedonian people.

Lake Dojran is one of Macedonia's magnificent natural resources. Located in the east of the country, it marks the border with Greece: only two-thirds of the lake are Macedonian. Gapo's work depicts an ancestral fishing technique: the cormorants and their cries drive the fish towards the shore. The waiting fishermen capture the birds, clip their wings and make them catch fish trapped in the reeds. Close bonds become formed between man and bird: the cormorant helps the fisherman, while at the same time representing a threat to the catch, if it manages to eat the fish!

In 1988, Lake Dojran underwent an ecological disaster: the excessive pumping of its waters to irrigate Greek lands, and the years of drought which followed, considerably emptied it. The volume of caught fish was cut by ten. This scarcity of fish and reeds along the shores finally got the better of traditional fishing, here immortalised.

Branko Gapo's film is an interesting mixture of documentary and fiction: real images of fishing are accompanied by a voice-over, explaining to the audience the rudiments of the ancestral method. But the action itself is scripted, and the music plays a dramatic role in the fictional character of this film, notably during stunning dreamlike sequences.