CLIENT: NEW YORK TIMES

Reeducated

SERVICES

Film Production
Strategy & Planning
Animation Supervision

BRIEF

The New Yorker’s “Reeducated,” an immersive V.R. documentary, directed by Sam Wolson, with reporting by Ben Mauk, illustrations by Matt Huynh and animation by Nicholas Rubin/Dirt Empire, that takes viewers inside the secret world of a “reëducation” camp in Xinjiang, China. In the spring of 2017, authorities in Xinjiang began detaining thousands of Uighurs, Kazakhs, and other predominantly Muslim minorities in secret extrajudicial detention camps. By 2018, as many as a million people were held in a vast network of “reëducation centers.” Guided by the eyewitness accounts of three men—Erbaqyt Otarbai, Orynbek Koksebek, and Amanzhan Seituly, all ethnically Kazakh—who were imprisoned at a facility in Tacheng in 2017, the film illuminates what is likely the largest mass internment of ethnic and religious minorities since the Second World War.

“Reeducated” premièred at SXSW, in the Virtual Cinema category, and received the film festival’s Special Jury Recognition for Immersive Journalism. It has gone on to win top prizes from France's NewImages, Germany's VRHAM and has been shown at many other festivals including the 78th Venice Film Festival VR Expanded section.

As of 2023 Reeducated was awarded a 2022 News and Documetary Emmy in the Outstanding Interactive Medica Category as well as a Peabody Award for Immersive and Interactive.

“Reeducated” was supported by the Pulitzer Center, the Eyebeam Center for the Future of Journalism, and the Online News Association, and accompanies the interactive New Yorker feature “Inside Xinjiang’s Prison State.”

AWARDS

2023 Peabody Award ⭢ Immersive and Interactive
2022 Emmy Award ⭢ News & Documentary
SXSW 2021 ⭢ “Special Jury Prize for Immersive Journalism” in the Virtual Cinema Category
“VRHAMMY” ⭢ at VRHAM! VR festival in Hamburg
“Special Jury Prize VR” ⭢ VR festival NewImages in Paris

PRESS

Foreign Policy ⭢ Painting Xinjiang’s Brutal Camps in 3D – Christina Lu
Eyebeam ⭢ A Deeper Look into the Latest ECFJ-Supported Piece with the New Yorker – Marisa Mazria Katz
Variety ⭢ Xinjiang ‘Re-Education’ Camps Brought to Life in New Yorker VR Doc at SXSW – Rebecca Davis
Agnes Pietrobon ⭢ Decoding XR: REEDUCATED, Jon Bernson, Matt Huynh & Nicholas Rubin XR Must
SXSW ⭢ Documentary on Internment in Xinjiang Wins Award at SXSW Pulitzer Center
Ben Mauk ⭢ REEDUCATED – Making of The Fugitive World
Variety ⭢ NewImages Festival Awards – Ben Croll

The Solution

Drawn from hours of firsthand testimony, survivor sketches, and satellite photos, the V.R. film uses Huynh’s hand-drawn pen-and-brush illustrations, brought to life by the animator Nicholas Rubin, and spatial audio, composed by Jon Bernson, to reconstruct the men’s experiences in a stereoscopic, three-hundred-and-sixty-degree space. Viewers can watch the film on desktop on newyorker.com or on mobile via YouTube. Use a cardboard viewer, or a headset such as an Oculus, for the full V.R. experience. See detailed viewing instructions here.

Dirt Empire supervised all of the animation production of the project with a team of visual effects artists to bring the project into stereoscopic virtual reality over the course of 1 year. Their goal in executing the highly technical animation was to craft a hand-painted world in keeping with Matt Huynh’s visual style, Sam Wolson’s directorial vision and Ben Mauk’s deep reporting — all in service to the depth of the story while leveraging the power of VR storytelling.