Reeducated

Reeducated takes viewers inside one of Xinjiang’s “reeducation” camps, guided by the recollections of three men—Erbaqyt Otarbai, Orynbek Koksebek, and Amanzhan Seituly—who were imprisoned together at a facility in Tacheng. Over the past several years, government authorities have turned Xinjiang, the largest region in China, into one of the most advanced police states in the world. In the spring of 2017, officials began imprisoning thousands of predominantly Muslim minorities in secret extrajudicial detention camps. By 2018, as many as a million people were held in a vast network of detention centers. It is likely the largest internment of ethnic and religious minorities since the Second World War. In December, 2019, just before the global Covid-19 lockdown, the reporter Ben Mauk, the film director Sam Wolson, and the artist Matt Huynh flew to Kazakhstan to interview Otarbai, Koksebek, and Seituly. Drawn from firsthand testimony, survivor sketches, and satellite photos, the VR film uses pen-and-brush illustration, brought to life by the animator Nicholas Rubin, and spatial audio, composed by Jon Bernson, to reconstruct the men’s shared experiences in an immersive three-dimensional space.

Reeducated brings viewers inside a Xinjiang prison camp, reconstructed from the memories of three former detainees. To create the film, Orynbek Koksebek, Erbaqyt Otarbai, and Amanzhan Seituly, all ex-prisoners of the camp who are now living outside China, shared testimony about the facility, describing in detail everything from their daily schedules and experiences of torture to the distance between beds. The artist Matt Huynh brought their recollections to life in stark, evocative pen-and-ink drawings, which were then assembled into three-dimensional spaces. Ben Mauk and I are grateful for our three subjects and the team of creators who made this film possible.

PRODUCTION 1: Soo-Jeong Kang, Monica Racic – The New Yorker
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PRODUCTION 2: Nicholas Rubin – Dirt Empire
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nicholas@dirtempire.tv
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PRESS OFFICE: Sam Wolson
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mr.wolson@gmail.com