
“The Language of the Film Slowly Emerges in the Editing Room”: Editor Michal Reich on DJ Ahmet

A fifteen-year-old boy navigates first love, familial pressure and his newfound love of music in DJ Ahmet, premiering in the 2025 Sundance Film Festival’s World Cinema Dramatic Competition. The film is the feature debut by Sundance Short Film Program alum Georgi M. Unkovski.
Michal Reich (The Ballad of Piargy) served as his former university mate’s editor. Below, he talks about moving scenes around in the edit to provide the desired emotional arc and preserving the performances of non-professional actors.
See all responses to our annual Sundance editor interviews here.
Filmmaker: How and why did you wind up being the editor of your film? What were the factors and attributes that led to your being hired for this job?
Reich: I’ve known Georgi Unkovski, the director, since university. So, when he was looking for a Czech editor to meet the co-production needs, it was a pretty straightforward journey to making DJ Ahmet together.
Filmmaker: In terms of advancing your film from its earliest assembly to your final cut, what were your goals as an editor? What elements of the film did you want to enhance, or preserve, or tease out or totally reshape?
Reich: The goal was to create a structure that is both entertaining and dynamic, yet meanders into character-driven moments that aren’t related to the main plot but still make us care and experience the world Ahmet is living in. It was essential to find a way to introduce these characters so we would root for them. Georgi had an amazing cast, mostly non-actors, who brought a rawness and freshness to the footage that we wanted to emphasise. The authenticity of these kids living in a remote village felt like a treasure to keep.
Filmmaker: How did you achieve these goals? What types of editing techniques, or processes, or feedback screenings allowed this work to occur?
Reich: There were certain key moments, almost like vortexes, pulling other scenes toward them based on emotional or symbolic resonance. So, we first experimented with placing those in different spots within the structure. The character was always the key. Who does Ahmet become if this or that scene is placed at the beginning? How does it change his actions in the end? Is his emotional arc going to be more about the first love or his family? We ended up with a reimagined structure for the first two acts, and to achieve it, we used all the editing tricks, like repurposing shots from different scenes, collapsing multiple scenes together, changing lines, elliptical and parallel editing, etc. As for supporting the authenticity, it involved a range of tools, from an imperfect editing style (e.g., cutting on a camera movement, which would traditionally have to be removed to achieve a polished cut) to using the first takes and some genuine moments before the slate.
Since the second or third version of the cut, we had help from a story editor with a fresh perspective, and aside from giving us a sense of where the cut was still lacking, he came up with amazing ideas that we added to the film.
Filmmaker: As an editor, how did you come up in the business, and what influences have affected your work?
Reich: Funnily enough, it was some pretty awkward Star Wars and kung-fu fan films I made in my early teens that brought me to editing. It resonated with me the most, which led me to apply to FAMU (Film and TV School of the Academy of Arts in Prague). FAMU has an amazing editing department that provides hands-on experience with film stock, encouraging you to really think about the meaning of every cut. My greatest influences were the former head of the department, Ivo Trajkov, who became a good friend and mentor, and the brilliant editor Andrija Zafranović. Later on, Gyula Gazdag and Franz Rodenkirchen had a significant impact on shaping my approach to storytelling and script consulting.
Filmmaker: What editing system did you use, and why?
Reich: ‘Dj Ahmet’ was edited in Avid Media Composer. I prefer Avid for its robust stability, simple UI (once you get used to it) and efficient project structure, with each bin as a separate file. If things go south, as they often do sooner or later, there are numerous ways to retrieve the work.
Filmmaker: What was the most difficult scene to cut and why? And how did you do it?
Reich: DJ Ahmet was the kind of project where the language of the film slowly emerges in the editing room. And as the scenes were moved around in the structure, lots of them became “difficult” to cut to fit the new shape. We reduced dialogues a lot and often restructured the beats for stronger emotional flow or different characterization. The rave scene was particularly challenging in finding the right balance between slick, funny and disastrous tones while maintaining character subtext throughout.
Filmmaker: Finally, now that the process is over, what new meanings has the film taken on for you? What did you discover in the footage that you might not have seen initially, and how does your final understanding of the film differ from the understanding that you began with?
Reich: It’s still too soon to tell. But it was incredibly touching towards the end of the editing process to see these characters come to life so vividly, and to witness the subtle balance between humor and drama, authenticity and fairytale-like moments, come together into a surprisingly wild and joyful ride.