Land of Steady Habits: Meng Reflects Familial Upheaval in Quiet Saga
“Isn’t it queer: there are only two or three human stories, and they go on repeating themselves as fiercely as if they had never happened before…” wrote Willa Cather in her 1913 American frontier classic O Pioneers!. The statement’s universality is a fitting observation which applies to Chinese director Huo Meng’s sophomore film Living the Land, a period piece reflecting on socio-economic transformations affecting four generations of one family in 1991. The displacement of a ten-year-old boy provides the impetus for a narrative highlighting how eroding resources strangle the traditions of peasant farmers whose dwindling communities lead to a sense of desperation for a new generation of families.… Read the rest
While its location might feel inherently unique, the happenings in Georgi M. Unkovski’s narrative debut DJ Ahmet sing a familiar tune. A coming-of-age trajectory defined by the formidable temptation of forbidden love fostered through the life-changing possibilities of music, this tale of a teen torn between tradition and self-fulfillment in Northern Macedonia feels overtly accessible for those satisfied with the familiar and the formulaic. Dealing specifically with a young Yuruk boy, a Turkic ethnic subgroup spread across the Balkan Peninsula, a local community festival provides the dramatic zenith as an act of rebellion towards the rigid expectations imposed upon a youthful generation faced with following the proscribed designs of their parents.… 
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