The Remarkable Life of Ibelin

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…

This deeply touching film will be embraced by gamers, but it’s a must-see for everyone else. Drawing on thousands of pages of game logs, director Benjamin Ree (The Painter and the Thief) brings Mats’ double life as nobleman/detective Ibelin in World of Warcraft to animated life. Here, in the game, Mats could be as strong, athletic and handsome as he wished. He could show his true character—his kindness and sensitivity—make friends, flirt with girls, even experience his first kiss.

The further Ree reaches in his attempts to answer the question of who Mats was, the more enormous the movie feels… [it] deepens in unexpected ways, as Ree and his animators continue to mine the rigorous personal depths of each World of Warcraft “character” and the people behind them. With whip-smart filmmaking that weaves together the physical and digital worlds, Ibelin is powerful cinema that uses its stylistic experimentation for distinctly humanist means, breathing life into a person’s story when it seemed like there were few dimensions left to explore.

Siddhant Adlakha, Variety

Ibelin is a rare work of non-fiction … A beautiful, powerful film that goes well beyond the expected.

Point of View

You need time to unwrap the ball of emotion whose center turned you to tears. Ibelin is a special film.

Robert Daniels, rogerebert.com

It is an emotionally shattering, crucial film for getting a firmer grasp on disabled lives, online communities, and, to a less important but also fascinating degree, gaming as more than a time-wasting hobby. This documentary means everything to me.

Robert Kojder, Flickering Myth