06/02/2025 - In his first feature film, Mateo Ybarra depicts daily life for a group of young scouts, between playful songs and small but significant rebellions

Presented in a world premiere within the International Film Festival Rotterdam’s Bright Future section, Swiss director Mateo Ybarra’s debut feature film Summer Camp [+see also:
interview: Mateo Ybarra
film profile] takes us into the heart of a gigantic scout gathering in the Swiss mountains. Having previously turned his gaze to group dynamics in LUX [+see also:
film review
film profile], which he directed in league with Raphaël Dubach (scooping the Films After Tomorrow Award in Locarno 2020), and in the medium-length film Sur nos monts, Ybarra is once again exploring daily life for a group of people who have decided to take time out to come together in a community. But this time round, he’s leaving the army behind and setting his sights on the equally influential universe of the scouts.

Focusing on a small group of kids contending with the scorching summer heat, raging hormones and the onset of their “adult” personality, Summer Camp follows the adventures of so-called Swiss scouts who have come together for the movement’s biggest event which takes place every fourteen years in the Swiss mountains. Between rituals which seem to hark back to another time and playful songs awash with now-problematic sexist undertones, but also profound discussions which last all night and long-term friendships, the film urges us to reflect on the technologically-connected and frenetic daily lives of these youngsters. Under the attentive gaze of Ybarra’s lens, this frozen moment in time that is the scout gathering becomes a kind of open-air laboratory in which the kids challenge their own limits and weaknesses, but where they also listen and are listened to.

Although the film only focuses on a handful of participants, the latter are never directly interrogated; they’re observed in line with group dynamics which are representative of the crux of the scout movement. Whilst, on the one hand, this apparent distance lends the film undeniable energy, helping it to maintain its ensemble nature and to embrace the group as a whole, the viewer does wish it would ask questions of the protagonists, to find out what they really feel and to uncover the contradictions inhabiting them. Between gatherings around an imaginary fire made out of torches (fires are prohibited due to the risk of wildfires), conversations about this and that, mini, individual rebellions triggered by the need to escape the confines of the enormous scout camp, and teachings passed down from one generation to another, Summer Camp depicts the ideals of a movement which is based entirely on community. But, owing to the recent scandals which have undermined the scouts’ apparent “perfection”, it’s hard to look at their activities without a certain level of suspicion. The aim of the film definitely isn’t to investigate the contradictions shaping the scout movement (and others), but it’s hard to get away from them. That said, Summer Camp does allow the audience to draw their own conclusions, or rather wrestle with their own doubts by way of incredibly rich and pertinent documentary material.

Sunny, dynamic and mischievous, Summer Camp takes the form of a children’s game whose rules are far more complicated that you’d believe.

Summer Camp was produced by Genevan firm L’artifice in co-production with French outfit Les Films de la Caravane.

(Translated from Italian)