“A North Macedonian coming-of-age drama that won the World Cinema audience prize at Sundance?” you say. No thanks. I’ve already chewed all the healthy raw vegetables I need today.
Set such facetiousness aside. Georgi M Unkovski’s DJ Ahmet is a hugely lively, energetically-scored romp that will connect with anyone who has ever been young and misunderstood.
The director has some fun with how the online world engages even the most remote communities. It exploits generational gaps common from Seattle to Skopje. But it is most concerned with the fleshing out of character. Here is an array of awkward oddballs for the ages. And a pink sheep.
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Ahmet (Arif Jakup) is, like so many other 15-year-olds, hooked on the oscillating beats of electronic dance music. But this is no urban jungle. We are in a remote corner of North Macedonia where Ahmet’s widowed father, still not over his loss, minds his animals on rich pastures. Our young hero has had to give up school to help out with the work and to mind his apparently mute brother, Naim (Agush Agushev).
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The two siblings enjoy an understanding beyond words. They dance to any available beat. They share joys and sorrows with knowing glances. They, to us, communicate a yearning for excitement that doesn’t interfere with affection for their community. Ahmet is always happy to help older neighbours required to navigate mystifying pages on Facebook.
Change kicks off when Aya (Dora Akan Zlatanova), hitherto resident in Germany, is brought back to the village for an arranged marriage to the unprepossessing Hakan (Metin Ibahim). “I like that you don’t know how to lie,” she says to Ahmet as their relationship gains an edge.
There is a temptation to glibly compare DJ Ahmet to all those 1950s dramas in which rock’n’roll kids fell out with uncomprehending parents (or even to Footloose), but the picture is far too deliciously rooted in its time and place for that comparison to make sense.
Revelling in bright fabrics and seductive horizons, the director, despite all the conflicts, is here to argue for both the warmth of traditional families and the excitement of contemporary youth culture. No film other than Sirat has, this year, made such compelling use of music.
DJ Ahmet is no chore. Seek it out on limited release.
In cinemas from Friday, March 27th
