©Courtesy of Sundance Film Festival
In a scene in DJ Ahmet, the winner of the Special Jury Award: World Cinema Dramatic, a horde of escaped sheep crash a rave party in the countryside. The beats pulsate as the sheep bleat. The bells jingle in the blinking lights while cool dudes dance and spray graffiti. But in this techno soaked coming-of-age story, the human black sheep is the Shepard himself. For the sake of rarity, a colorful, charming crowd-pleaser debut from North Macedonia has seen new light.
Music is also the escape for 15-year-old Ahmet (Arif Jakup), the boy in question. He’s a mild, small-town rebellion with blond curls, tanned face from working in the sun, wearing a nerdy multicolored jacket. Frustrated with his simple life, he shares his love for music with his younger brother Naim (Agush Agushev).
In secret, and as often as possible, he listens to music on earphones or on the blue tractor with his brother who has stopped speaking since their mother died, leading their father to take the youngest to a healer. Their father (Aksel Mehmet), a grumpy and grieving farmer forbids his children to listen to music and makes Ahmet quit school to help him take care of the sheep – “as if they were his children”. Ahmet doesn’t resist, but inside he boils.
©Courtesy of Sundance Film Festival
From the key moments at the rave party, Ahmed seems to slowly bloom, even though he must embarrassingly gather the sheep in front of everyone and later becomes a Tik Toc sensation without his knowledge. He gets tender looks from the girl Aya (Dora Akan Zlatanova) who is visiting from Germany to go through with an arranged marriage. For the first time in the film, he smiles. He has found what he is looking for.
Feature debut director Georgi M. Unkovski uses an easy and light touch showing talent when he balances humor with timeless themes. He impressively avoids the pitfalls of silliness and sentimentality mixing upbeat music and slow-motion scenes with artful shots. His fresh take on the tensions between generations, tradition and modernity, and classic coming-of-age elements of first love, are made with such tenderness and playfulness.
The whole story takes place in a world that feels authentic. The small Yuruk village in North Macedonia is an integral part of the story and just a few miles away from where the director lives. The DP Naum Doksevski beautifully captures the village and landscape, lusher and more colorful than many that are used in films from Balkan.
The Yuruks are semi-nomadic shepherds spread over a wide area in the eastern parts of North Macedonia as well as neighboring countries. Their skill in weaving wool is often seen in their characteristically colorful clothing that characters in the film are wearing. The film’s leading actor, Arif Jakup, also comes from the village. He and the younger brother were found after meeting over 3,000 children of this ethnic minority in Macedonia. They carry the whole film. Equally good is the largely young cast from the area, adding to the authenticity.
©Courtesy of Sundance Film Festival
Most of the older ladies and the extras in the film are from the actual village. The film begins and ends with these ladies sitting under a large tree on a hill overlooking the vast landscape. Their dialogue is funny and witty, as are the attempts to employ internet and technology around the call to prayer from the mosque, a call that repeatedly echoes throughout the valley.
It’s a joy to see a North Macedonian film getting attention, after the five years since “Honeyland“(2019), about one of the last nomadic beekeepers in Macedonia, became the first nonfiction film to receive Oscar nominations in both documentary and international categories. Unkovski is surely a filmmaker to be heard from more. One of his talents is his ability to create a relationship between the story and the music. His rich soundtrack mixes modern English-language songs with music specific to the region, from C.U.T. to Murat Övüç and Erkut Taçkın, mixed with Alen Sinkauz and Nenad Sinkauz’s wonderful score.
Light, engaging and touching, the film also uses an almost fable-like element in form of the appearance of a pink sheep, the very one that escaped at the rave party. Relating to the black sheep Ahmet, the film makes a modern comment on being different and the feeling of not belonging. Being the black sheep just has various colors.
Grade: B+
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