Small Nation Poet is a documentary portrait of Slave Gjorgjo Dimoski, one of the most prominent living Macedonian poets.

The film observes his intimate and deeply personal writing process. Dimoski lives in the mountain village of Velestovo, where he was born, overlooking the city of Ohrid and the vast, quiet surface of Lake Ohrid. The landscape — open, still, and timeless — feels inseparable from his poetry.

His way of writing is physical and emotional. He drafts his poems by hand, searching for the right words, repeating them, reshaping them, allowing the rhythm to guide him. The process often overwhelms him, building an inner tension that borders on anxiety. In moments of frustration, he tears the pages apart and throws them away, only to return later, gathering the fragments and recombining them into new forms. From these broken pieces, the poem slowly emerges.

For him, rhythm is everything — each word placed with precision, each pause deliberate.

Witnessing his process was a profound experience that deeply influenced my own creative approach. At times, it reminded me of film editing: he assembles words the way I assemble images — searching for structure, meaning, and emotion through fragments.

Throughout the film, I also introduce subtle fictional and fantastical elements. Two women — one in white, one in black — appear and disappear like muses, quiet manifestations of the inspiration that accompanies him through life and art.