52 Films by Women Vol 10. 2. 17 (Director: Kosara Mitić)
The film opens with two boys, Filip (Dame Joveski) and Caki
(Petar Manic), taking turns kissing Sara (Eva Kostić). One of them decides to force
himself into her. The act doesn’t look consensual, Sara turned over and
instructed to ‘stay still’. When we next see her, she is in her kitchen about to
go on a school trip to Greece. We wonder
if this scene is taking place the next day and whether Sara will confide in her
parents. In fact, several months have passed. Sara is not keen on the trip. Her
father offers to take her to the pick-up point. He is proud of his daughter and
doesn’t consider her reluctance to travel as concerning. Her mother is occupied
with Sara’s young brother and prepares to go to work. We spend the remainder of
the film with Sara as she reminds her teachers that she has paid extra for a
room by herself, a request, we discover, that is not honoured.
Sara is keen to avoid one of her classmates, Nina (Eva
Stojchevska) with whom she had a falling out. Nina is now seeing a boy Sara
once dated. We sense that the boy was one of the pair who sexually abused her
in the film’s opening. Another girl, Lina (Martina Danilovska) seeks her out.
Lina is more sheltered than Sara, more innocent, illustrated by the board game
that she packed to entertain herself during the trip. For the majority of the
teenagers boarding the bus, this excursion is an excuse to party.
While Sara doesn’t try to be friendly, she does not rebuff
Lina, allowing her to sit next to her on the coach. The field trip organiser, a
middle-aged woman who insists that the group are ambassadors for their country,
intends to take the group to a museum. However, at least one member of the
class has other ideas. Upon arrival, he declares the hotel to be unsuitable. He
is unsuccessful in getting the accommodation changed but his intransigence does
persuade the organiser to let the class chill, concentrating instead on
assigning students to the ten available rooms. Sara has to share – her second
disappointment. Lina will share Sara’s room as will Nina, who has turned
herself into a people pleaser.
Whilst in the room, Sara slips into the bathroom and removes
the strapping around her belly. She is pregnant, hiding her condition from both
the school and her family.
There is not much privacy to be had, and that’s the point.
The students become increasing raucous, buoyed by the lack of restraint and a
group mentality. Of the three adults accompanying them, the driver has no
responsibility, the field trip organizer struggles to impose her authority
while a second teacher, a young woman, prefers to screen out the teenagers with
noise-cancelling earphones. The students disregard her presence alone.
In one scene, Sara is pestered by Caki for her stash. She
informs him that she doesn’t have it any more; maybe she sold it to pay for her
room upgrade. Filip asks for the return of his earphones. Sara doesn’t have it
with her. The inference is that they have bought her silence. Sara’s default
setting is not to engage with the other students, until she absolutely has to.
One boy appears to be different from the others, not joining
the other students when they decide to go into town. He and Sara play Lina’s
board game, the boy explaining the rules. He attempts to be over friendly with
Sara, betraying himself as just another horny teenager.
The group returns from their aborted night out, having been
ejected from a bar. They continue to drink. In one of the rooms, Lina drinks
with them. Then some boys overstep boundaries. Sara, who is essentially persona
non grata, comes to her rescue.
The unruly nature of the group is illustrated by their
treatment of the hotel owner. Some of the boys assault the man. The trip
supervisor is absent, taking no responsibility, though the next day she
lectures the group, interrupting herself to ask the driver to fetch her some
eggs.
As punishment, before crossing the border, the group is
taken to the museum, where Sara feels increasingly more uncomfortable. While on
the coach, faulty air conditioning raising the irritation level of the
students, she has an emergency that requires her to leave the vehicle, just as
the group is slowly being processed.
The last fifteen minutes or so of the film is intense. Mitić
shows Sara’s emergency in painful extensive detail, the camera on Sara’s face
while she endures her private hell. After she re-boards the coach, a desperate decision
in itself, we see a woman head towards the bathroom.
Mitić uses Sara to make a wider point about taking
responsibility in an uncertain world. If the supervisor was serious about the
students being ambassadors for their country, she should have vetted them. They
are intended to perform in Greece as a choir. Sara does her best to ensure that
Lina does not fall foul of unchecked behaviour. The annoying boy also wants to
leave the bus, but he is just testing boundaries.
Pictured: Assembled for the school trip from hell, the class of 17, the feature debut of North Macedonian co-writer-director Kosara Mitić. Still courtesy of Totem Films.
Retaining Sara’s point of view throughout, 17 is
riveting. Though it is not for everyone. At the Berlinale screening I attended,
there were boys not much older than Sara’s classmates who scoffed derisively.
They didn’t leave, but their sniping was constant. Undoubtedly, the behaviour
that Mitić’s film portrays isn’t just a North Macedonian problem, but common to
countries that venerate machismo. The ‘entitlement’ of the ringleaders is
disproportionate to their ability to contribute to a better society. We see this in
right-wing so-called ‘populist’ movements everywhere.
Reviewed at Berlinale 2026, Cubix Cinema (Screen 8), Potsdamer Platz, Berlin, Friday 21 February 2026, 21:45 screening
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