Amateur Teens 2015

Amateur Teens 2015
1h 32min | Drama | 30 September 2015 (Switzerland)

Storyline:

A group of normal 14-year-old teenagers at a secondary school in Zürich with the normal yearnings for love and acceptance. But the power of social media, with its high-gloss selfies and perpetual pressure towards cooler and sexier, increasingly forces the kids to deny their true feelings. So a tragedy runs its course, one in which it is almost impossible to differentiate between perpetrator and victim, guilt and innocence.

User review:

The story follows a group of Swiss boys and girls in their mid- teens. They all go to the same high school in Zurich and seem like your everyday sorts of teenagers. However, their outlook is largely shaped by external influences and vices, eg porn, drugs, social media, peer pressure. This leads to some dramatic actions and consequences.

Not a new subject – pretty much a 2015 update of Larry Clark’s Kids, in a Swiss setting. Is quite sensitively done though. While Kids was good, it teetered on the brink between a profound story and creepiness. Niklaus Hilber, the director of Amateur Teens does his best to be confronting without turning the movie into some cheap titillation exercise, and does so very well.

The stories are honest, realistic and engaging yet the tone is not overly judgmental. The kids have redeeming qualities, to an extent, and there are enough examples to show that not everybody is like this. There is some hope for the youth of today.

Director: Niklaus Hilber
Writers: Niklaus Hilber, Patrick Tönz
Stars: Annina Walt, Chiara Carla Bär, Zoë Pastelle Holthuizen
Country: Switzerland
Language: Swiss German | German | English | French | Arabic
Release Date: 30 September 2015 (Switzerland)
Also Known As: Born Digital
Filming Locations: Zurich, Switzerlan