With the “Stalk” series, go to the dark side of screens and teenagers

After the Skam France phenomenon and the touching Mental , France TV Slash confirms its status as the place to be for young people and young people. Latest proof to date with the new Stalk series, which offers spectators to go to the dark side not of force, but of screens. As its title suggests, it is about stalking, the verb to stalk, stalking, punishable by law, which has changed in nature with new technologies and social networks.

"It all started with a photo of Mark Zuckerberg where you saw a stick on his webcam," says Simon Bouisson, co-creator and director of Stalk , available since Friday on Slash. However, I realized that Donald Trump and the Pope also had it ... If the greats of this world do it, it is because you are in full contemporary paranoia. "

Have you ever stalked? 💻
Discover #STALK (award-winning best director and young male hope at @festivalfiction).

An addictive and dangerous game available on March 13 on https://t.co/zQEzj0tpHU#stalklaserie pic.twitter.com/BohUjZNaSX

The portable, the object of youth par excellence

A paranoia that the series exploits as part of an engineering school, with the future geniuses of computer science, and piracy, starting with Lucas (Théo Fernandez). But humiliated during a weekend of integration, he decides to take revenge on the members of the BDE and their leader Alex (Pablo Cobo).

"It goes into all phones, computers, digital objects," comments Simon Bouisson. He can see everything, or even hear if you stick a sticker on the camera. My first intention was both to make people paranoid and to make people aware that they understand that the object they have in their hands, the object of youth par excellence, in which they have complete confidence, can potentially spy on them and hunt them down all the time. "

"The web allows us to reach new spectators"
Director of #Stalk, the new creation of @francetvslash platform launched tomorrow, Friday March 13, @SimonBouisson returns to his series designed for smartphones. #stalklaserie https://t.co/fAX6r0aQZQ pic.twitter.com/ZMwKwJ8ErU

Contemporary anxiety

Lucas quickly becomes an ambiguous, immoral hero, and the series thus tests the empathy of the public, like Scarface , Breaking Bad , or more recently, and younger, of You on Netflix. "We are caught up in our game, we want it not to stop, to go further and further," comments the author-director. Whether it is manipulating Alex, to better replace him, or in his relationship with Alma [Carmen Kassovitz, daughter of and charisma to spare] that he seduces at his expense. It's the classic “rise and fall”

"Lucas, under his pseudonym Lux, represents today's society, where one is hunted down by algorithms, where advertisements on Instagram are surprisingly perfectly targeted ... He is less a personified threat than a contemporary anxiety. "

After seeing #stalk low I'm too scared now I think I'm going to start

already that I'm paranoid with everything that is camera etc so now it's even worse 😭 #STALK

We continue with the second episode .. But before I put a piece of tape in front of my camera #Stalk

Stalkers and stalkers?

In the empathy test, the “I love you, therefore I stalke you” spend a little less, especially in these times of #MeToo and cyberbullying, to which 20 Minutes devoted the series “Taken for target”. “Alma is very virulent at first when she learns that Lucas is the stalker, comments Simon Bouisson. Then she will open windows on her life, but which she will choose, to regain control over the stalking. Alma embodies the exhibitionism of certain Internet users, who are both stalked and stalkers. We spend our lives watching stories , accessing people's privacy. People who open their privacy voluntarily. The relationships are reversed, are complex. What allows to have non-Manichaean characters. "

Whether it's hacking itself, always credible, staging pirated videos, always inventive, Stalk is a real visual and narrative success, ideal for binge watching, and offers a distorting mirror - a black mirror? - on new technologies and new generations.

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