24/11/2023 - The alienation and emptiness felt by Gen Z are at the heart of Czech director Zdeněk Jirásky’s new movie, toplined by two teens fleeing their unhappy lives

Thirteen-year-old Marek films everything on his smartphone: the rain as it buckets down between dilapidated buildings, an alcoholic sleeping in a doorway, even his own mother getting intimate with her new boyfriend, whom Marek can’t stand. The teen, himself, is filmed by dozens of mobile phones: his school friends’ as he hones into view with a plastic bag on his head in a test of courage, but also when he’s being bullied, when there seems to be no escape from the many lenses pointed right on him. One day, Marek’s lens crosses that of Tereza. “Has your mobile got enough charge?”, she asks him, and from that point onwards there begins an escape, for the two adolescents, from their unhappy lives, which turns into an adventure bigger than they are, documented every step of the way on their smartphones.

I Don't Love You Anymore - the new film written and directed by Czech director Zdeněk Jirásky, which debuted in the Warsaw Film Festival (where it won the Special Jury Prize) and which screened in competition in the 24th Lecce European Film Festival - revolves around a teenage game which gets out of hand. Marek and Tereza (youngsters Daniel Zeman and Maisha Romera Kollmann) come from two different social backgrounds but they’re equally dissatisfied in life: Marek lives in a block of flats with his mother (Anita Krausová), with whom he enjoys a brilliant relationship, until she invites her new boyfriend into their home (and their bed). Tereza belongs to an unaffectionate, middle-class family and continually challenges her parents (played by Réka Derzsi and Marian Mitaš) with little acts of rebellion.

The only time the two of them seem to cheer up is when they turn on their cameras and act out funny or daring scenarios together, between train carriages, abandoned buildings and piles of junk, which they then archive in their phones. So why not raise the stakes? Ultimately, what starts out as a bit of a dark game – taking photos of Tereza in coercive situations, chained up or locked in a cage – turns into a staged abduction, aimed solely at terrifying the young woman’s parents. But after sending the photos to Tereza’s mother, the two teens are unable and unwilling to stop. They run away without any particular destination in mind, aboard a train which takes them to another country where they can’t speak the language and where inexperience, loneliness and yearning for a warm bed soon leaves them disillusioned, because, ultimately, they’re “only children” and they don’t know what to do with all that freedom.

Our two, small protagonists who are embarking on this journey into the unknown are remarkable for their spontaneity and expressiveness, confidently bearing the full weight of the film on their shoulders. The director maintains a certain level of impenetrability when it comes to their thoughts and intentions, in true impenetrable adolescent style, demonstrating his ability to capture the emotions, contradictions and liveliness of that age as they veer from madcap games to existential doubts in the blink of an eye. “I’ve done my best” - “We did it together”, the two protagonists reassure one another. But if that emptiness isn’t filled, it will only swallow us up.

I Don't Love You Anymore is produced by Czech firm I/O Post in co-production with Arina Film Production (Slovakia) and Tangaj Production (Romania).

(Translated from Italian)