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‘Her body is her business card’: Sweat director Magnus von Horn on the world of online influencers

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Magnus von Horn makes a confession few film-makers would admit to: “Some of the things I saw on social media were more moving than what I saw in the cinema.” Cinema and social media are currently the best of enemies: competitors for our precious attention, at opposite ends of a spectrum of cultural prestige, perhaps, but more similar than they would like to admit. Like so many of us, Von Horn admits to spending too much time on his phone but, unlike most of us, he turned his screen addiction into art by turning cinema’s lens on to social media.

Von Horn’s new film Sweat focuses on Sylwia, a driven young Polish “fitness motivator” (played by Magdalena Koleśnik) with some 600,000 followers online. We first find her leading a group workout in a shopping mall, bouncing around in pink Lycra, shouting words of encouragement through her headset: “We can do it!” “I’m diving into your beautiful energy!” “I’m super, super proud of you!” She loves her fans and they love her back. And through her regular online posts, she keeps them not only motivated to be as fit as she is, but abreast of all aspects of her life – making a shake in her kitchen (with her sponsor’s products), unboxing freebies; even carrying her shopping up the stairs is a broadcastable moment.

As we follow Sylwia’s life over a few days, the gaps between her public and private personas become apparent. Despite her confidence, success and enviably toned physique, she is, in fact, desperately lonely and insecure. Aside from her brand, she has little else in her life, as she tearfully confesses to her followers. She also has a stalker whom she finds masturbating in his car outside her block of flats. Perhaps more disturbing is his suggestion they are very much alike.

Sweat director Magnus von Horn.
Sweat director Magnus von Horn. Photograph: Agencia EFE/Rex/Shutterstock

Sylwia was inspired by a real-life social media influencer, Von Horn explains. His debut feature, The Here After, which debuted at Cannes in 2015, was about a teenage killer returning from juvenile detention into his Swedish rural community (Von Horn is Swedish but lives in Poland). The 37-year-old director describes it as “very static, bleak colours, slow, silent, serious”. He wanted his follow-up to be the opposite, “something very loud, colourful, with lots of dialogue”. After spending a year promoting The Here After, though, he was short on inspiration, he says. “I was trying to come up with all these noble film ideas but I was spending more time on my phone. That was the first time I started following a fitness motivator on Snapchat, and I couldn’t stop. She was posting maybe 70 clips per day. And it created such a strange narrative, because it was so many silly, banal things mixed with sometimes very serious things.

“There was some jealousy in me about that ability to share your life in such a spontaneous way – not thinking about strategy, just sharing her life as roughly and dirty as possible. I called her a narcissist in the beginning, but then I think it might be more narcissistic to not be able to post like that, because you’re thinking so much: ‘How will I be presented if I do this post?’ So it was very much about my reactions to watching her: since we’re so different, where do we meet?”

As well as a focused (entirely fictional) character study, Sweat has much to say about the effects of social media on society, identity, even spirituality. It describes a cult-like world of self-improvement, self-commodification and self-punishment, bound together by collective belief but full of contradictions. “It’s like: ‘Accept your body, but have a perfect body.’ ‘Look at my body, you will never get my body, love your own body.’ There is this kind of unity of women, with feministic slogans. But they are also used to sell T-shirts, so it’s like capitalising feminism.”

Sweat is also very much about performance, which is where social media and cinema rub up against one another. Actors like to talk about finding “truth” in their performances; to social media influencers like Sylwia, it comes naturally. And while film-makers must plan like military strategists and meticulously hone their stories to appear “truthful”, an influencer can record a clip straight to their phone then transmit it directly to their audience while they’re brushing their teeth. It’s almost like cheating.

Trying to locate “truth” in a film such as Sweat is like walking into a hall of mirrors. Not only is its central character unsure when she is being “herself”, she is also, it is easy to forget, an actor, performing performance. Koleśnik does a remarkable job here. She spent a year and a half preparing for the role, which involved living the fitness lifestyle for real – training, diets, workouts. She also negotiates the layers of performance superbly, especially at the story’s surprisingly emotional climax. “I think we reached something where it was genuine for her at that moment, not only as a character but personally,” Von Horn says.

Sylwia with some of her followers in Sweat.
Sylwia with some of her followers in Sweat. Photograph: Artificial Eye

Von Horn is conscious of his status as a male director, making a film about women’s bodies, poring over their social media posts. In effect, wasn’t he just like Sylwia’s stalker? “I’m very aware of me in the stalker’s seat as well,” he admits. But “I never felt that was a problem because we were quite clear on what interests us, what’s important in this film. So Sylwia’s body needs to be credible, but it’s also a mindset. This is her job. She takes it seriously. For her, it’s not like a sexy body; it’s like her business card. It’s what she believes in.” As if to acknowledge some culpability, though, Von Horn points out that the stalker in the film is named Rysiek, the Polish version of Richard, which is his own middle name. The stalker also drives a Volvo – a Swedish car.

Von Horn is something of an anomaly as a Swedish director living and working in Poland. He first went there aged 21, to study at the prestigious National Film School in Łódź, whose alumni include Roman Polanski and Krzysztof Kieślowski. It wasn’t so much the school as the challenge of taking “a big, life-changing step”, he says. “I was brought up in a very safe, upper-middle-class bubble in Sweden. It was very much about not hurting each other, avoiding conflict and being diplomatic, even in your feelings.” Poland, by contrast, was harsher, tougher, more honest, which is what he felt he needed. “I never planned to stay. But after spending many years here, meeting my wife, and also a lot of the people I work with, I didn’t want to move back.”

The outsider perspective is noticeable in his work: both The Here After and Sweat focus on lonely, isolated characters struggling to fit into their societies. Having set out to make a different movie to his previous one, by Von Horn’s own admission, Sweat is “basically the same film”. “And that’s OK. And I even try not to think about it so much because it’s something I don’t really want to understand. It’s what interests me, it’s what moves me, and I’m not interested in putting words to it.”

He already has a next project lined up: a historical “drama-horror” set in Copenhagen just after the first world war. So no more screen time required. Von Horn doesn’t view social media as an existential threat to cinema; he sees them more as varied viewing experiences related to their context. It is different watching a story in a darkened room with strangers to doing so on your television or phone, he points out. “So depending on where you show something, you need to adapt your storytelling to that.”

He never met the real-life fitness motivator he based Sweat on, he says. He emailed her once but she never replied, which he is glad about in retrospect. By chance, though, Koleśnik did meet her. They happened to be working out at the same gym one day and fell into conversation about animal welfare. Koleśnik did not mention the movie. The fitness motivator ended up following her on Instagram.

Sweat is released on 25 June in cinemas and on Curzon Home Cinema

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