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‘DJ Ahmet’ Review: Wondrous North Macedonian Drama Mixes Upbeat Music, Punchy Humor and Pathos
An unforgettable ensemble, laugh-out-loud comedy and heartsore drama make writer-director Georgi M. Unkovski’s winning feature feel like a revelation.
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. 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. 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.
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