From the first frame, Kosara Mitić’s “17” refuses to pull any punches, plunging us immediately into the traumatic moment when a hookup between high-school student Sara (Eva Kostić) and two boys takes a violent turn. From here, this nervy teen drama from Macedonia picks up several months later and follows the withdrawn Sara over the first two days of a class trip to Greece, where one of her assailants is among the unruly group of youngsters. Winner of the Best Actress prize at Sarajevo after premiering in the Berlinale’s Perspectives section, the film has a bleak, unflinching gaze that sometimes skims the edges of shock-value miserablism. In the end, however, Mitić’s intrepid approach is undeniably bracing, and held together at its core by Kostić’s simmering performance.
In the most superficial sense, “17” resembles one of this year’s more auspicious festival breakouts “La Gradiva”: Both follow a raucous senior class to a foreign country and in the process unearth dark truths about the gang via restlessly fluid camerawork that, in extended close-ups, mercilessly lays bare its protagonist’s anxieties. Also partly filled with nonprofessional young actors, Mitić’s hair-raising debut makes that French first feature look sunny by comparison. There’s a practical reason for this darkness beyond the obvious Eastern European somberness: The first day of the trip, and the bulk of the film, takes place in a stopover hotel in Bitola that cinematographer Naum Doksevski casts in dim jaundiced lights and long shadows.
