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SUNDANCE 2025 World Cinema Dramatic Competition

Review: DJ Ahmet

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- Macedonian director Georgi M Unkovski's first film overcomes tired coming-of-age tropes with authentic and vibrant characters and settings

Review: DJ Ahmet
Agush Agushev (left) and Arif Jakup in DJ Ahmet

The first feature by Macedonian filmmaker Georgi M Unkovski, DJ Ahmet [+see also:
trailer
interview: Georgi M Unkovski
film profile
]
, overcomes the tired tropes of the coming-of-age subgenre with its authentic setting and characters, although it suffers in terms of rhythm. It has just world-premiered in Sundance's World Cinema Dramatic Competition, marking Unkovski's return to Park City after 2020's short Sticker.

When we first meet the titular 15-year-old boy, he is no DJ, but he is fanatical about music: we see him at school, rocking out to a high-energy electronic track with his buddy. A member of the Turkic Yuruk minority, he lives in a remote village in the hills with his father (Aksel Mehmet) and little brother Naim (Agush Agushev). Played by non-professional actor Arif Jakup, he wears his nomadic heritage on his face, chafed by the sun and the wind.

The boys have recently lost their mother, and the five-year-old kid doesn't speak. So, the traditional father (all of the dads in the film adhere to tradition) takes the boy to a healer every day, leaving Ahmet to tend to their 20 sheep. They live off selling cheese and tobacco, which is picked by women in colourful Yuruk clothing, making them look like flowers in the field.

Among them is Aya (Dora Akan Zlatanova), Arif's 17-year-old neighbour, and obviously his love interest. All set for an arranged marriage to a Turkish gastarbeiter from Germany, Aya stoically listens to her strict father but has a secret plan as to how to escape it. And she is not immune to Ahmet's simple, open-hearted advances.

One night, Ahmet stumbles across a rave party in the woods by the village. With its colourful and strobe lights, and young people jumping around to the throbbing music totally out of place in the Yuruk world, the dreamlike scene intensifies as his sheep escape and arrive at the party. One goes missing, an oversight for which Ahmet will be spending several nights outside until his father repeatedly wakes him up with a bucket of cold water.

The rave scene is an example of Unkovski mixing the implausible with what could be taken for magical realism: sheep are very sensitive to loud noises, but this definitely happened, as we witness the consequences. There are other such instances, but the charm and chemistry between the main players, and the good-natured spirit of the film with its decent dose of humour, which mostly works, just about disguise such discrepancies.

True to its title, the feature strongly relies on music. Aya is secretly rehearsing a TikTok dance with three friends, and Ahmet ingeniously provides the tech. His father takes away the computer speakers his wife used, with the boy protesting about how much she loved music (another slightly jarring cognitive discrepancy). The Sinkauz Brothers' rich score combines traditional instruments and melodies with electronic beats, underlining the film's tradition-versus-modernity throughline.

The mix of naturalistic scenes and impressionistic segments that convey the hero's point of view makes the film vibrant and engaging. It tackles too many topics to fully explore them, but for some of the most heartfelt ones, a little is enough. And in terms of the editing, by Michal Reich, there is a frustrating start-and-stop aspect as some scenes feel cut too early, obstructing the flow of the narrative. Still, most of the elements, including Naum Doksevski's inspired, varied camerawork with intense colours and the upbeat vibe, could take it way beyond the festival circuit.

A co-production between North Macedonia's Cinema Futura and Sektor Film, the Czech Republic's Alter Vision, Backroom Production and Analog Vision, Greece's 365 Films and Serbia's Baš Čelik, DJ Ahmet is handled internationally by Films Boutique.

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