The Seville European Film Festival welcomes the Spanish premiere of the film Sweat, a Polish-Swedish co-production portraying influencers in all their complexity.
The Seville European Film Festival welcomes today the Spanish premiere of the film Sweat, a Polish-Swedish co-production that will compete for the Golden Giraldillo in the Official Section. The film portrays in all its complexity the influencers, figures of enormous importance in today's world, through its protagonist Sylwia, a fitness guru in this fictional story but very much anchored to contemporary reality. Its director, Magnus von Horn (Göteborg, 1983), has explained that it has been a very long process that goes back to 2015, when he had the idea for this project: "I started following some of these fitness influencers on Snapchat and almost became obsessed with them. I was angry and at the same time fascinated by the fact that they were so successful, I almost envied their spontaneity. That made me wonder what kind of influence I would have.
Magdalena Koleśnik (Białystok, 1990) was the first to audition to play Sylwia, and although there were "hundreds of auditions" later, according to Von Horn, she was finally chosen. The Polish actress has described as "unique" her work in this film and her relationship with the Swedish filmmaker, which crystallized into "a very deep union where the professional and the personal were intertwined. Sylwia is also my character, I contributed many of my fears and all of our taboos, projecting them onto her". Koleśnik also explained the hard and intense preparation, a year and a half in which she worked out a lot, "but that changed the relationship with my own body and also ended up influencing my way of thinking and how I relate to others".
Von Horn says that the actress wasn't even on social media, "so it was a real learning experience that had to be given time, you couldn't force it. For Sylwia's character, she was inspired by a close friend, the actress and influencer Aleksandra Domańska, whom she thanks for "her brave way of expressing herself on the internet, publishing controversial issues, like when she has advocated for the pro-abortion protests in Poland. But Sweat's protagonist is not just a reflection of her or a specific person, but also of the many trainers she followed for many hours on Instagram: "It's not just about fitness, but about revealing the truth about yourself and getting the reward of social acceptance, which in the end we all need. In that quest, the networks represent the tunnel we go through.
In that context, social media can show, as in the film, the most vulnerable side of the influencer. Magnus Von Horn, who is returning from a first feature film with a very different theme (the potent The Here After), said that after that he felt like tackling another issue. Nevertheless, they both have in common to "try to understand those people with whom we have nothing to do at first". The Swedish director, who confesses to being "quite passive" on social media, says he has no clear opinion on them, "I don't know if I want to have one either. In fact, I think they are beautiful and cynical at the same time, but in this project they have served as an extension for me to focus on emotions that seem honest to me and that are there; even if they are pornographic, to cite an example". For Koleśnik, "we can think what we want, but our lives are overwhelmingly in there".