DJ Ahmet review – totally charming tale of teen travails in North Macedonia
A young shepherd besotted with his neigbour rigs up his tractor to play music from so she can practise dance routines in a story that remains sunny without hiding hardship
‘You’re the first celebrity from the village!” This is Ahmet, a teenager from an isolated farming community in North Macedonia who is all over TikTok after being filmed chasing his sheep through an illegal rave in a field. His flock of bassline junkies escaped their pen and charged straight over to the rave, to the hilarity of the clubbers. It’s a funny moment in Georgi M Unkovski’s totally charming coming-of-ager, a film with serious points but choosing to make them with kindness and a mostly sunny worldview.
Arif Jakup plays Ahmet, a 15-year-old whose face is already weatherbeaten to the shade of a conker; he lives with his dad (Aksel Mehmet) and younger brother Naim (Agush Agushev). Life is tough on their tiny farm in the mountains: Ahmet had to quit school to look after the sheep; his little brother hasn’t spoken since their mum died. Ahmet worships his neighbour Aya (Dora Akan Zlatanova) like a goddess; she has lived in Germany but is back to be married off to an older man in the village. Jakup and Zlatanova, two nonprofessional actors, give lovely natural performances: he’s bashful and adorable; she’s worldly-wise. So Aya can practise dance routines with her friends, Ahmet turns DJ, pimping his tractor with speakers.
In another movie, this love story would be doomed to a desperate tragedy, though here the film doesn’t ignore the realities of living in a conservative patriarchal universe. For a girl like Aya that involves marrying a man she can’t stand the sight of. For men too it can be devastating. Ahmet’s father is grieving, barely coping – but emotional expression is not what men do in this community. Instead, the script steadily goes about its mission of freeing its characters from all forms of oppression – but it’s generous and unpatronising too. My favourite character is the imam at the local mosque, so hopelessness with technology that his PA system gives the film a belter of a John Hughes moment at the end that, while not entirely unexpected, is warm and moving.
• DJ Ahmet is in UK and Irish cinemas from 27 March.