This is one of those lovely, quirky films about a country you probably don’t know much about that balances humour with some serious themes.

Ahmet (Arif Jakup) is the son of a farmer in rural North Macedonia, pulled from school because his dad needs more help with the sheep. His younger brother Naim (Agush Agushev) is mute, and it is not clear if this is something he was born with or has been caused by the recent death of their mother. The boys’ father is an angry man, uncaring of what they want out of life and more worried about what the other villagers think of him.

Ahmet’s neighbour’s granddaughter Aya (Dora Akan Zlatanova) has just come from Germany to prepare for marriage. And by marriage, that means being wed to a man that she doesn’t know.

She has a love of dancing, and she and Ahmet connect over this when he helps her practice for a dance that she will be performing at a local festival. Her plan is to perform the dance so well that her father will call off the wedding. I’m not sure why she thinks this is what will happen.

There are some lovely humorous moments sprinkled throughout and a riff on the difficulty of the older villagers understanding technology, including some nice repeated jokes about the loudspeakers of the mosque. There’s some quirky oddities, like a lost sheep turning up dyed bright pink and stylistically we almost feel we are in a rural nether world.

The audience at my screening – it was one of the last ones of the festival – all found it really funny, laughing out loud at the comedy. The undercurrent though is fairly grim, although you never feel really the weight of it. The villagers are stereotypes, stupid and bumbling men, angry and violent men, silent women. But overall it’s an enjoyable 90 minutes. I’m not sure it passes the Bechdel test though, too many unnamed women.