Reeducated

Roles: Director · Co-Developer · Producer

Reeducated takes viewers inside one of Xinjiang's "reeducation" camps, guided by the recollections of three men who were imprisoned together at the same facility. Using over a dozen hours of first hand testimony, brush and ink animation and ambisonic sound, the VR film reconstructs the experience of detention and political reeducation. As many as a million people were held in a vast network of "reeducation centers." It is likely the largest mass-internment drive of ethnic and religious minorities since the Second World War. The film was supported by Pulitzer Center on Crisis Reporting, Eyebeam and The Online News Association. The film has shown at 18 film festivals thus far, won top awards from three as well as two ONA awards for the entire multimedia package.

The film was the second part of the most ambitious immersive interactive feature that The New Yorker has ever made. Part one of the project "Inside Xinjiang's Prison State" launched on The New Yorker's website in early March 2021.

We worked on this collaboration with The New Yorker for over the past 18 months. Ben Mauk, Matty Huynh and I traveled to Kazakhstan in early 2019 just before the pandemic restricted travel to speak to over a dozen former detainees and victims. Moving between "reeducation camps", and the surveillance state rolled out across Xinjiang the second part of the project explores the scope of China's campaign of persecution against ethnic and religious minorities.