ComingSoon Editor-in-Chief Tyler Treese spoke to The Remarkable Life of Ibelin director Benjamin Ree about the World of Warcraft documentary focusing on Mats Steen. The documentarian discussed his latest film, navigating the legal rights by using “the Norwegian way,” and a surprising personal connection to the subject that he didn’t know about before starting the project. The film is now streaming on Netflix.
“Mats Steen, a Norwegian gamer, died of a degenerative muscular disease at the age of 25. His parents mourned what they thought had been a lonely and isolated life, when they started receiving messages from online friends around the world,” says the logline for the movie.
Tyler Treese: I read this incredible story where you had seen the BBC feature, and you reached out to Mats’ parents. You got these home videos from them, and you and your parents were in the video, right? That makes it all seem destined. Like you were the one supposed to tell this story. That blew my mind.
Benjamin Ree: Yeah, it blew my mind, too. I think one of the first footage I saw when I digitalized the family videos was first Mats and then me right beside Mats in a playpen together. So I called up my mother and asked her, “Could you look at our family photo album?” She sent me a screenshot of a picture of Mats and me in a playpen together. So, without knowing it, I had met Mats as a baby.
I really love just this core story in The Remarkable Life of Ibelin because here’s this person whose parents didn’t think he was getting to live a fulfilling, full life, and we see through gaming and an online community that he’s able to experience all of this. What about that human element really stood out to you?
I think one of the first things I noticed when I began reading this huge role-play and forum posts, like text archive, was that I saw it was a common age story here. I could recognize a lot of the things Mats, even then, had the experience growing up from the teenage years. The only difference was I had not experienced that inside a game. So that was one of the things that I really wanted to portray. How is it like to grow up inside a game? Is it possible to experience love with somebody you never met? Is it possible to make friends? That was one of the things that resonated with me a lot about his story.
But at the same time, Mats was as ill as it’s almost possible to get towards the end of his life. He could only move his fingers, and he managed to help so many of his friends around Europe. So when he passed away at the age of 25, people from all over Europe came to his funeral, and his parents received around 50 different messages telling stories about what their son had meant to them, but also how their son had changed their lives. So that was one of the first things I began realizing when I began making this film.
One thing that I thought The Remarkable Life of Ibelin did so well and leveraged was this blog that Mats put out before his death. He was just such a wonderful writer. How was it selecting those tidbits? That’s such a great way to frame the story through his own words and through his own perspective.
Thank you for saying that. I think when I heard that Mats had written a blog, when you’re making a documentary film, you really hope, “Oh, I really hope it’s good writing.” But usually, to be honest, in documentaries, when you tell a story in retrospect, it’s usually bad writing, and you need to work a lot to make that work. When I read the blog, I was actually extremely surprised, in a very positive way, because it was so well written. It was highly thoughtful, philosophical, it had a rhythm to it. It was a kind of stream of consciousness way of writing. The stream of consciousness kind of writing works so much better in film than just one-to-one writing. So I think for me it was 10 out of 10, his blog, and I will encourage anyone to read it. We also gathered text from outside the blog in forum posts as well. Mats did some interviews as well, so we gathered kind of text from other places, but most of them are from his blog, which is called Musings of Life.
I love that you guys used the actual models from World of Warcraft and animated these scenes, and we’re in this really inventive space with documentaries where we’re seeing stuff like Piece by Piece also come out where we’re seeing documentaries presented in such a unique way. So, I would love to get your thoughts on just using other technology and really helping show his story through this virtual world.
For me. I think that there are so many people who live parts of their lives online, and I think it’s very important for documentary filmmakers, but also all storytellers, to tell those stories. We need to find new ways to tell those stories, and I think with this film, our goal was to make a film that would invite everyone into the virtual world with kind of real events, real characters, real dialogue. Everything has happened, but it is in the reconstruction of the game. So I think that by inviting everyone in with the animation, but at the same time, hopefully, all the gamers will feel it’s a good representation of the game. So that was our goal.
I’m, of course, very much a fan of documentary filmmakers trying out new stuff. I think, to my knowledge, this is the first documentary to recreate an actual lived avatar life in retrospect. We had many films that show the gaming world, but it’s more in the present tense. Here, we are doing those constructions in retrospect, and we’re doing it with animation that is a representation of the game. y goal was that also my grandmother would understand it. She’s 94 years old, and she did, which was a great accomplishment for me personally.
I read that you showed The Remarkable Life of Ibelin to Blizzard after the fact, and they had a very positive response. How key was it getting that sign-off from them? Because there’s another world where they’re like, “Well, you’re using our property,” and all this work goes down in flames. Can you speak to that?
It was a huge risk. I think it’s possible to take out models from the internet, from the game, so we could make this film without knowing about it. So we actually just made the film without telling them. Then after approximately three years, we wrote them an email saying, “We’ve made this film. We used your [intellectual property]. We used your whole world. Can we get the rights for free without involvement from you?” That’s what I call the Norwegian way.
Then they wanted to watch the film, so we traveled to California to their offices. I was extremely nervous. I’m a very neurotic person, and my producer Ingvil [Giske] is not, but I had to take some extra doses of asthma medicine in order to breathe before that meeting because we did not have a plan B. So we showed them the film. After the film, one of the bosses looked at us, and he said that this was a fantastic film. He was actually crying, and he said, “We will let you use our world.” So, that was a huge relief. If they had said no, I don’t think this film would’ve been made.
I’m really glad this is being released on Netflix as well because of the global reach. This is such a global story, just as how Mats impacted so many people from different countries. So, what does having this platform and getting it to be seen by so many people mean for you?
That means a lot. I’m a Norwegian documentary filmmaker. I’m not used to my films being watched by many, and I make, first and foremost, documentary films for a Norwegian audience here. It’s now gradually reaching the world. … I hope that many people watch it, but … it means a lot. This film is, in a way, a celebration of the online communities, and to show this on a digital platform felt very right for this project.
We’ve seen MMOs come under fire for being addictive. I’m glad that we got to see such a positive take on it because I know other gamers and I’ve made such meaningful friendships through games. I’d love to hear you just talk about that flip side because there is a stigma around somebody spending so many hours on a game like this.
So, in Norway, when I read the news, I would say that approximately 98% of news coverage about gaming is negative. It’s too much time used in front of a screen. It’s toxic. The people you meet there can be dangerous. Always those kinds of headlines. I found it very important to tell a different kind of story, and I hope this film can create discussions between the generations. That the youth will talk to their parents about gaming or the grandparents. I hope you can create a better emotional understanding of how impactful online friendships can be.
At the same time, I think also, hopefully, the film shows this in a nuanced way. We also show that Mats could actually hide behind the computer, and that created a lot of problems for him. So we’re not only showing the positive sides, we are also showing some negative sides, which is, of course, important as well. I’m really looking forward to people discussing it.
We’ve had the theatrical release in Norway of this film. 120,000 people watched in the theaters, and we’re a very small country, which is a lot. We saw that a lot of parents and grandparents saw it first, and then they watched it again with their teenagers or children. They spent a lot of time discussing it afterward. So for them, many gamers got messages from their parents like, “I’m sorry, I disconnected the internet to your computer. Now I understand more how important those online friendships are for you.” So I think for us as filmmakers, it’s very fulfilling to see those kinds of conversations arising after they’ve watched the film.
Thanks to Benjamin Ree for taking the time to talk about The Remarkable Life of Ibelin. It is now streaming on Netflix.
