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CINEMA JOVE 2018

Review: #Seguidores

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- Iván Fernández de Córdoba’s fiercely independent second film turns a critical eye on today’s digital despotism

Review: #Seguidores
Jaime Olías and Sara Sálamo in #Seguidores

Wolrd-premiering at the 33rd edition of the Cinema Jove festival in Valencia, #Seguidores [+see also:
trailer
film profile
]
is the second full-length film from Iván Fernández de Córdoba (Valencia, 1989), following his 2015 debut feature, Cruzando el sentido, and three short films. Starring Sara Sálamo (seen in Roberto Pérez Toledo’s Like Foam [+see also:
film review
trailer
film profile
]
 and in Asghar Farhadi’s Spanish-language production Everybody Knows [+see also:
film review
trailer
film profile
]
— the opening film at Cannes this year), Jaime Olías, Rodrigo Poisón, María Almudéver, Norma Ruiz and Aroa Ortigosa, and with a screenplay written by the director himself with Sergio Serrano Rovira, the film draws on a medley of genres, from thriller to fable to social commentary, all the while occupying an aesthetic terrain somewhere between the realms of advertising and dreams.

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The story introduces us to a pair of young influencers, Sara and Erik, who embark on a back-to-nature adventure with the aim of documenting their every move on social media — their actions finding meaning only through the tyranny of the like. After suffering the odd mishap as they meander through the more analogue side of life (only to be expected in such an unnatural environment) the two run into another, older heterosexual couple who approach life from a diametrically opposite perspective, still, perhaps anachronistically, unconverted to the cult of digital. 

The confrontation and rivalry these four characters give rise to some of the film’s most accomplished moments, as it mounts a critique of zealotry in all its forms and, towards the end, begins to segue into horror. As things turn increasingly bleak, the shadowy forest setting (shot on location in Navarra) comes into its own, and we are led towards a conclusion tinged with nightmare and disillusionment. 

Produced entirely independently, #Seguidores offers a study of a way of approaching the world in which appearances are everything, Wi-Fi is as essential as oxygen and the public exposure of one’s own life, and the lives of others, is the very foundation of existence. The inevitable upshot of all this, as we see every day, is a society marked by technological dependence, a complete disregard for privacy and something akin to generalised idiocy.

#Seguidores was produced by Nautilus Films & Projects and SinMuros Films.

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(Translated from Spanish)

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