It’s a surprise to learn how a country like Switzerland, which has played an historically neutral role within European conflicts, nevertheless has a standing army of citizen conscripts, ready to be mobilized if needed.
Not that all the Swiss conscripts are elite operatives, far from it.
The characters in Mateo Ybarra’s Over Our Hills, selected for Opus Bonum International Competition, are a ragbag of serving or former soldiers, whose social media posts the director has gathered and moulded into a 54-minute film. The quality of the self-recorded visuals and audio isn’t perfect, but that’s not the point. What we get is a highly personalized view of army life, much of the time funny, sometimes bizarre and quite often underscored by boredom and frustration.
We see the standard (but always amusing) footage of a single recruit who turns the wrong way during drill operations, and we see manoeuvres in Alps with cow bells for aural accompaniment. In another post, a guy snorts amphetamines along the barrel of his rifle, while another extols the virtues of his AK47 over other firearms. Soldiers camp it up in uniform, while another, shot from the waist down, frottages with the butt of his rifle. A musico soldier raps his frustrations at army life while, elsewhere, a small group gathers to talk to women on webchat. The end of the film records that most basic of emotions – relief – when the term of service comes to an end.
Ybarra tells how he made Over Our Hills “in parallel” with his previous film LUX, co-directed with Raphaël Dubach. It is obvious that the subject of the Swiss army and the sense of imperative that it instils into its conscripts is of prime interest to the filmmaker.
“Far from being convinced by the relevance of such an institution and its functioning, the intertwining of civil and military society is nevertheless fascinating to me,” he says. “Over Our Hills is therefore anchored in an ambiguous feeling: to find what is human in a universe that tries to reduce it to nothing: this is perhaps my desire for cinema with this film.”
As a companion piece to LUX, it offers both comparisons and contrasts, not least in use of material gleaned from online platforms. “I felt a real coherence between the concept of a militia army, constituted by the people themselves, and that of a material shot by the very same protagonists. It felt just right to continue our work with this process in order to explore this topic from a different perspective,” Ybarra stresses.
“With LUX, we went physically there, and we understood that there were places we couldn’t go with our own camera. This project allowed me to go beyond some of the constraints/restrictions and express further things about this experience. This is somehow the completion of our work on this institution.”
How did Ybarra square the use of third party footage, and what concerns did he have in doing so? “My main concern was ethical. At no point is the film supposed to touch anyone’s integrity, or put anyone in a delicate situation,” he responds. “Most of them [the conscripts] were already online on public platforms such as YouTube or Instagram, willing to be seen by the widest audience. Sometimes I tried to contact the ones that were not on some obscure channels with no contacts at all, or I simply didn’t use their material. Again, my main intention was to focus on the institution itself, not the individuals. There are some delicate moments indeed, but in my view, it was essential to show what this experience could lead you to, such as being violent to oneself and/or others or even the pressure of groups’ dynamics.”
In the film, one grizzled military type talks expansively (and articulately) about the purity of the people’s army ideal. He stresses how Switzerland owes its prosperity, credibility and freedom to both to its neutrality and (more importantly) its historical ability to mobilize a “highly motivated, well-armed, well trained” army. But in these days of social media, he likens the latter day Swiss youth to those who enjoyed “the good times of the early summer of 1914,” suggesting they are blind to a world in conflict around them. Does Ybarra agree with this assessment?
“When editing it, I used this specific sequence because I was interested in representing the state of semi-paranoia one could have at some point,” the filmmaker says. “Now that things have evolved into the direction he’s mentioning, it would be easy to say he [the soldier in the film] had foreseen this context of war coming. However, I must say I do not agree at all with his position nor with his solution of re-enforcing the military in
Switzerland.”
“His presence/discourse is important for the film as not only is he articulate about the situation, but he’s definitely touching something that is part of the essence on why such an institution is still ongoing: I’m talking here about the question of security, which needs to be raised, questioned, and concrete solutions must be found for sure,” Ybarra further opines.
“But I guess, we should rather reflect on how to handle security/armed forces (and how they should behave as well as what should be their power), as well as thinking about finding solutions on social/ecological/cyber-security issues,” he continues. “And not on the side of an institution that relies essentially on warrior-behaviors and traditional masculinity.”
Given that the film was a long time in the making, and constructed in parallel with the feature LUX, how does Ybarra reflect on the new work prior to its world-premiere at Ji.hlava?
“It is a film made alone and with extreme curiosity, which makes it a very intimate and personal film, even though I haven’t shot a single frame. It took many structures and directions, but there’s something that is very valuable in such a low-budget process – that is time,” he answers.
“At the beginning, I tried to make the film as exhaustive as possible, until the moment I realized it was really following my own experience in the military, what I have seen, heard and felt. From then, it was like a puzzle for which I had the whole picture in mind, and that I needed to find the right pieces to use,” he continues.
“Whether it is first oscillating between the futility of everyday life and the out-of-this-world military activities, I wanted us to dive into a reflection on our relationship with others. The different movements of the film were realized thanks to the snippets of stories that allow to give different insights into this universe. I wanted these interactions, these exchanges, these conflicts to be the shape of this project. To create a sort of impressionist mosaic, bringing out original or banal chronicles, human or military considerations, words tinged with boredom and wonder, enthusiasm or, on the contrary, anguish. In other words: to give the sensation of facing this human fortress,” Ybarra ends.
