Babystar
Luca Sommer was groomed for stardom before she was even born, her parents Stella and Chris running a YouTube channel called Our Bright Life where they charted their lives and travels together and later the progress of her pregnancy, ultrasound scans, Luca’s birth, even potty training, their house wired with cameras and a dedicated room set up for interviews, Luca, affectionately called Nunki, encouraged to be open about her feelings and experiences, a child unguarded before a global audience.
Now in her teens and an internet sensation, the Sommers are presented as a family unit but it is around Nunki the material is centred, adored and looked up to by thousands of her peers but without any real friends of her own, her personality cultivated, her responses to any question managed and “work” taking precedence, an AI company now proposing that an avatar of her is created to provide direct tailored interactions with her four million followers, expanding her brand by offering a simulation of closeness which Nunki herself lacks.
Written by Nicole Rüthers and Joscha Bongard and premiered at the Toronto International Film Festival, Babystar is directed by Joscha Bongard, starring Maja Bons, Bea Brocks and Liliom Lewald as Luca, Stella and Chris, presenting a structured façade of harmony and wholesome happiness which conceals deep dysfunction and a growing resentment amplified when Nunki is asked whether she would like to be a big sister to a new baby, the focus of absolute attention suddenly overshadowed and potentially replaced.
Proving the maxim that every unhappy family is unhappy in its own way, Stella and Chris anticipating a surge in engagement and planning to livestream the birth, because having done it previously it would be unfair to hold that experience from their second child, Nunki is allowed no space to process her feelings, her existence a spectacle for public consumption, her parents exerting passive control on every aspect of her life which is a soft glove over firm coercion.
With no boundaries in place, all areas access granted in the pursuit of content for the channel, even the concession of getting Nunki a dog for companionship a photo opportunity, Stella and Chris are smiling monsters, she having created her daughter in her own image, the same clothes and hair, their little rituals intended to keep them close a dependency which has left Nunki unable to be alone, sleeping in the same bed as her parents when she has nightmares.
A film uncomfortable yet relatable despite its presentation of a family dynamic atrociously messed up in a peculiarly modern way, for who has not looked at “influencers” and “Instagram models” and wondered how they can possibly be real, with Nunki begging for her parents to let them have just one normal day as a family Babystar flags as it progresses, mirroring Nunki’s own loss of sense of self and direction, but has much to say about the artificiality of self-created fame and parents who live through their children.
Babystar is currently on limited release
