Niklaus Hilber
Amateur Teens, Niklaus Hilber (2015)
Niklaus Hilber is a Swiss screenwriter and film director. His second feature Amateur Teens premiered at Locarno, Valencia, Tallinn Black Nights and Zurich, where it won the Audience Award for Best Film.
In an exclusive interview with Filmatique, Niklaus Hilber discusses identity formation, the ethics of showing violence onscreen, teenage resilience and his next project.
//
FILMATIQUE: Your debut feature Amateur Teens chronicles the daily lives of several teenagers growing up in Zurich. Though well-heeled, the characters all struggle with typical problems of youth which are exacerbated by the prevalence of digital platforms that encourage them to distort their looks, their feelings, their identities. What drew you to this story in particular?
NIKLAUS HILBER: I noticed that cases comparable to those described in the film have been growing more common in Switzerland and I began to study them in detail. I was able to see that the feelings and needs of today's teenagers are not vastly different from those of our own generation. The difference, however, is that through the influence of an ever-more sexualized Internet a climate is created in which there is a distortion of perception between love and sex. On the one hand are feelings, on the other the almost grotesque images from hardcore porn. These feelings are hard to reconcile.
FLMTQ: Modern teenage reality is changing every day and is already vastly different from the experiences of even one generation ago— primarily due to how rapidly technology and various forms of social media have taken over our interactions. The rules today feel somehow different. What specific pressures do you believe this generation is subjected to, and how will they be different from generations of the past as a result?
NH: The pressure of creating, feeding and updating the digital identity. With a Facebook or Instagram account, a person creates an "image" of oneself. The image is what a person wants to be in the light of collective expectation, how they want to be perceived in public, the persona is what are. Naturally, image and persona are not the same, but they feed on one another. This can be very disorienting if a person has not yet had certain primary experiences in life, let's say with love and sex.
FLMTQ: Social media use has been linked to anxiety and depression in medical studies more and more frequently. In your experience, what is the cause of this? Is it fact that having a presence online forces a person to mediate his/her identity according to certain individual or collective expectations; the constant distraction from everyday life; the superficiality of human interactions; Instagram envy; or even increased access to dangerous situations for which young people are not equipped? How do you believe the great democratizing force of technology has come to spiral out of control, and what is the solution?
NH: I am not sure if there is a solution or not. I am a filmmaker, not an expert on the subject. But what I have observed through my research and working with teenagers is that they often develop a resilience, that they find their own new ways of dealing with certain problems, ways that adults would never think of.
Amateur Teens, Niklaus Hilber (2015)