DJ Ahmet: Macedonian Coming-of-Age Story Predictable but Sweet

By Chris Knight

Rating: B+

In the coming-of-age sub-genre of youthful rebellion and forbidden love, DJ Ahmet from Macedonian writer/director Georgi M. Unkovski is about as mild as they come. But that doesn’t diminish its crowd-pleasing pleasures.

Ahmet (Arif Jakup) is a 15-year-old in rural Macedonia, pulled out of school to help his widowed father on their sheep-and-tobacco farm, and to look after his younger brother, Naim (Agush Agushev), a sweet little boy who for some reason doesn’t speak.

Ahmet would rather be in school, but he dutifully lends a hand. Things start to go awry, however, when the neighbour’s daughter Aya (Dora Akan Zlatanova) arrives from Germany for an arranged marriage. After running away from her at first sight, he gradually works up the courage to speak to her.

She is interested in him in part because of an early scene in which he wanders into a music festival with his entire flock in tow. I thought it was a dream sequence, but it turns out to have really happened, and she shows him a TikTok of the event with 2,500 likes. (“That’s like five villages,” he breathes, awed by his sudden celebrity.)

Aya also has music in her soul, and is practicing a dance number with some local girls that she is certain will anger her father enough to call off her nuptials. (The performance, in traditional costumes that show neither skin nor shape, is a wonderful example of how sensuality comes from within.)

Ahmet figures out a way to hook up speakers to his dad’s tractor, thus creating a portable sound system to help Aya practice. Of course, we know this is just going to stoke the fires of affection between them, and we know her family won’t like it, and neither will Ahmet’s dad, and…

OK, truth be told you can probably figure out most of the movie’s “twists” before they arrive. And the film needs at least two fewer instances in which people are shown grooving in slow motion to loud music, only to pull back and reveal that their movements are less impressive and the volume more muted than it first seemed.

But there is still much to appreciate here, including winsome performances from the young actors, a sympathetic portrayal of rural Macedonian culture, and some useful lessons in how not to look after sheep.

Oh, and there’s a fun recurring scene of a group of old women on a hill beneath a tree, discussing the plot of the movie before, during and after it takes place. The only thing better than a Greek chorus is an ACTUAL Greek Chorus.

DJ Ahmet. Directed by Georgi M. Unkovski. Starring Arif Jakup, Agush Agushev, and Dora Akan Zlatanova. In theatres January 2 including Toronto’s TIFF Lightbox.