Sundance Interview: A Chat with ‘DJ Ahmet’ Director Georgi M. Unkovski

With a unique take on the tensions between tradition and modernity, DJ Ahmet is one of the most unique films in the 2025 Sundance lineup. Directed by Georgi M. Unkovski, it follows a 15-year old boy as he navigates his love of electronic music and the girl next door amid the strictures of his village’s traditions. Following its award-winning premiere, Unkovski stopped for a chat with Award Radar to discuss the film.

Shane Slater: What inspired this story?

Georgi M. Unkovski:  I think there’s a lot of things, but I think the strongest one was this huge contrast between generations that exists in Macedonia and even more emphasized in these villages. Also, my fascination with European culture, which exists very close to where I live, but kind of on the margins of society. That combined with my fascination with electronic music contributed to the idea of the film.

SS: Even though you’re telling the story from a young person’s perspective, the filmmaking shows a genuine appreciation for this landscape and its traditions. Could you talk a bit about that?

GMU: Yeah, definitely. I definitely didn’t want to take sides. I think both tradition and modernity have beautiful things about them and not so great things about them. So I really wanted to walk this fine line between what tradition means and what modernity means, in a sense. Like it is in real life. So we’re kind of, rejecting tradition, but there’s a lot of good things about it, and we’re accepting the internet and social media, but there’s also a lot of bad things about that as well. So I just wanted to give the observation of this young person dealing with these things without explicitly taking sides.

SS: I love how you portrayed that sibling relationship. How did you craft those characters and their bond?

GMU: They carry the film, right? It was the hardest thing to kind of find. We saw over 3,000 kids from these regions in Macedonia and did many different pairs of siblings before we came to Arif and Agush. And I think just seeing them together on the screen really feels like a gift. And I’m really happy we managed to find them.

Our casting director, Kirijana, she’s amazing in her relentless pursuit of trying to find the perfect combination. And just seeing them on the screen, I think, kind of solves all our dilemmas and we knew we had a movie when we put them together.

SS: The scene with the sheep at the party is so absurd, that I wondered if it was inspired be something that actually happened in real life. What was the inspiration for that scene?

GMU: That’s actually the first thing I wrote and the first kind of idea that was the root of the film or the script. Usually, when I think of an idea, I don’t necessarily write it down right away. I try to see if it sticks with me. The shepherds running into the party was something that was there from the very beginning. And I was thinking about it for months before I wrote it down.

And it’s because it felt like it could happen in real life, you know? That was one of the biggest motivations behind it. So that’s the first thing I wrote. And then I started writing backwards and forwards from that point on. And it’s something that could totally happen. It hasn’t happened, but maybe. It felt like it could.