For his new feature, Babystar [+lee también:
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entrevista: Joscha Bongard
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Cineuropa: Was there a specific trigger that made you want to tell this story?
Joscha Bongard: I belong to the first generation that grew up with social media. It started when I was a student – I made friends, I fell in love. That’s why I’m generally very interested in social media. I had already dealt with it a little in my other films, like Pornfluencer. That’s also when the basic idea for Babystar came up: “A child sues their parents.”

What fascinates you about the subject of social media?
In social media and in influencing, we see a general intensification of our world, a highly capitalised society in which literally everything is communicated, and many of the most intimate moments are turned into capital. That has become necessary in order to survive nowadays.

What was important in the relationship between the members of this influencer family?
Children want recognition and love from their parents. If that is only possible under certain conditions, unusual dynamics emerge. For my co-writer, Nicole Ruethers, and me, it was important for the film to have something universal. We wanted audiences to be able to find, within this highly exaggerated relationship between the child and the parents, elements that we all recognise from our own families. We thought a lot about the parents’ past in the film. We imagined that they had already been social-media stars as teenagers, that they defined themselves through that and never really developed further. They got stuck in this machine. And then they realised that presenting children was particularly profitable.

How did the cast come together?
We started with the character of the daughter, Luca. The many casting sessions were a great experience – we got to know a wonderful generation of emerging actresses. Once we had Maja Bons for the role of Luca, we searched for the actors to play the parents. We rehearsed for a week with the three of them together, and they developed an extremely strong dynamic.

One gets the impression that you used the colours and aesthetics common in social media. Did you have a colour concept? What was important about the visual design?
We talked about everything, but never about colours. We didn’t say, “I want this character to only wear red.” It all evolved organically through working with the production design and costume departments. For the camerawork, we asked ourselves: “What should the film look like? What should the light be like?” And by working together with the production designers, it all came together and everything fitted in.

How is the promotional campaign for the film shaping up? How will you incorporate social media?
That is, of course, a certain dilemma that we live with because so much around films also takes place on social media, and you are forced to engage with it. And it’s also a world that we know well and that we use ourselves. We will actually recreate the family channel from the film.

As a filmmaker, or as someone from the media industry, I would wish for us to deal more critically with social media. I believe that warnings usually don’t work. I hope that the movie sparks discourse, that people talk about how to deal with social media. It is important to teach people how to handle it, to train them. Social media reflects our capitalistic system, and that’s something we have to confront.

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