The first time 15-year-old Ahmet (Arif Jakup) smiles broadly on-screen lives up to the cliché that someone’s infectious grin can light up a room. Amid the bright colors of an EDM festival happening in the middle of the forest, the teen with wistful eyes surrenders to an upbeat tune and to the crowd of young people around him. By that point, most viewers will already have been irremediably disarmed by “DJ Ahmet,” Georgi M. Unkovski’s music-soaked, delightfully humorous and unpretentiously stylish debut set in a remote North Macedonian village.
But that moment of enjoyment is only a brief, illusory respite from Ahmet’s laborious responsibilities herding sheep and caring for his kid brother Naim (Agush Agushev), the picture of innocence and adorableness, who hasn’t spoken since their mother died. From the onset, Unkovski introduces a rich soundtrack that mixes modern English-language songs with tracks specific to the region, as well as Alen Sinkauz and Nenad Sinkauz’s larger-than-life score, which sounds as if Ahmet were a mythical paladin on a quest. To express how inextricable the relationship is between the story and the music that scores it, the director uses slow-motion in precise instances, demanding the audience be present with how it is experienced Ahmet, Naim and eventually Aya (the charmingly spunky Dora Akan Zlatanova as a girl visiting from Germany to go through with her arranged marriage.
Grieving his wife by forbidding his children from listening to music, Ahmet’s father (Aksel Mehmet) shows little compassion for his teenage son. Concerned about the young one’s muteness, the stern parent spends plenty of time and money taking him to visit a dubious healer, so much that he unenrolls Ahmet from school so he can care for their animals. Mild-mannered Ahmet doesn’t protest, but a visible heaviness weighs on him. Thankfully, Unkovski avoids turning the father completely irredeemable, but paints him as a product of his environment, with Ahmet representing the promise of a different, more sensitive masculinity.
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In finding Jakup to play his endearing protagonist, Unkovski discovered a true diamond in the rough whose face exudes the sincerity of an untainted soul. “I like that you don’t know how to lie,” Aya tells him as the two (and their little chaperone Naim) hang out away from their respective grim realities. The extraordinary Jakup, however, doesn’t go for simplistic naiveté in his quietly soulful performance, but rather communicates Ahmet’s interiority in a shy smirk or his beaming eyes. Encased in the character’s unimposing frame, there’s a selfless bravery that prompts him to stand up for others — especially lovely Naim.
Under the striking golden light that washes over the pastoral setting, Jakup’s timidly expressive face is captured in striking close-ups by cinematographer Naum Doksevski (who also shot the kinetic “Housekeeping for Beginners”). “DJ Ahmet” is a film comprised of striking visuals and vibrant color. In this corner of the world, traditional attires are inherently bright, but the filmmakers boost their impact by conceiving the images to look unassumingly radiant in the way hues mingle in the frame.
At every turn, Unkovski’s perspicacious writing finds compelling avenues to illustrate the disconnect between the youth plugged into a world larger than their small mountain community of Yuruk people (a Turkish ethnic group) via their cell phones and the pastoral and deeply patriarchal lifestyle that still endures there. Just as effectively, Unkovski derives universally understandable comedy from culturally specific situations. The plight of a technology-challenged imam whom Ahmet kindly helps on multiple occasions is a recurrent side-splitting gag. The sound of Microsoft Windows starting up has never been so funny. With every perfectly timed joke, including those involving Ahmet’s missing sheep, one’s admiration for Unkovski’s artistic vision grows given the tonal feat he accomplishes.
Neither saccharine nor emotionally slight, “DJ Ahmet” is grounded on the bruising realities of life in patriarchal societies where there’s little space for men to engage with their emotions or for women to have full agency over their lives. Unkovski bookends the film with sharp, dream-based commentary and premonitions by the local elderly women, who discuss local affairs and encourage Ahmet from afar. Unkovski’s narrative works so that the adolescent fondness between Ahmet and Aya acts as an empowering catalyst to defy conventions, whether by performing a “provocative” modern dance number in front of all the residents or adapting a tractor to become a mobile DJ setup.
The sort of film that urges one to tell everyone about it so that they too can bask in its wondrous pleasures, “DJ Ahmet” is a revelation in that it seamlessly straddles the line between laugh-out-loud crowd-pleaser and art-house gem with affecting gravitas. And though it goes into expected coming-of-age territory (via blossoming romance, the desire to assert one’s identity and parent-child conflict), the cultural context, Unkovski’s inventive storytelling flair and the utterly extraordinary first-time cast land it in a realm of its own.