Reeducated is an Emmy and Peabody award-winning documentary that takes viewers inside a detention camp in Xinjiang, China, exposing what is likely the largest internment of ethnic and religious minorities since the Second World War.
In the spring of 2017, officials in Xinjiang began imprisoning thousands of Uyghurs, Kazakhs, and other predominantly Muslim minorities in secret extrajudicial detention camps, transforming China’s largest region into one of the most advanced police states in the world.
Developed by Ben Mauk and Sam Wolson, this first-ever virtual-reality New Yorker documentary is guided by three men who were imprisoned together at the same facility. Their recollections reveal the secret world of these camps, where detainees spend ten hours a day in classrooms — studying Chinese or taking classes focussed on political indoctrination and the dangers of Islam — and often endure torture and stints in solitary confinement.
Drawn from firsthand testimony, satellite images, and survivor sketches, Reeducated uses pen and brush animation to reconstruct the men’s shared experiences in an immersive three-dimensional space.
The companion piece to “Inside Xinjiang’s Prison State,” an interactive magazine feature, Reeducated premiered at SXSW 2021, where the film won the Special Jury Recognition for Immersive Journalism.
Reeducated won the 2022 Emmy Award for Outstanding Interactive Media and the Peabody Award in the Immersive & Interactive category. The film has screened in more than 30 film festivals around the world, receiving the grand prize at VRHAM! Virtual Reality & Arts Festival in Hamburg and the Special Jury Prize at NewImages Festival in Paris. Reeducated was a Best of VR selection of the Venice Biennale and was selected for the 2022 Horizons VR exhibition at the PHI Centre in Montreal.
Қазақ тілінде көріңіз (тек Қазақстанда)
Reviews and Jury Statements
Peabody Award Judges: "Under the highest journalistic standards, the Reeducated team immerses viewers into the extreme anxiety, fear, and suffering that over a million people—and counting—continue to endure. For co-creating powerful immersive evidence of life inside mass internment camps and bearing witness to the profound resolve of survivors in defense of their personal and collective humanity, Reeducated wins a Peabody."
Foreign Policy: "It's impossible to look away."
IndieWire: "a haunting, lyrical representation"
SXSW Virtual Cinema Judges: "Reeducated offers a glimpse into a horrifying world obscured from public view. ... It’s a striking piece of 360 cinema that makes a clear argument for the unique affordances of immersive formats for telling stories.”
Online News Awards Judges: "What a powerhouse of a piece. This is new and uses all types of immersive techniques to tell this compelling story. The combination of illustrations merges with 360 images, tiny planets, VR and parallax storytelling sets a new, high bar."
XRMagazine: "This is a work of true journalism -- the kind of journalism that can make a difference and change you at your core. ... It is also a beautiful piece of art."
Oregon Artswatch: "The project that will stick with me [from the Venice Biennale's VR programming] is Reeducated ... It’s one thing to read an article about prison camps in Xinjiang, but bearing virtual witness to their experience is more visceral, more affecting, and therefore more effective ..."
David Remnick, editor of The New Yorker: “The New Yorker team behind this stunning and haunting film deeply understands the power of visual journalism, and they saw an innovative way to describe one of the most horrific human-rights outrages of the modern era.”
Interviews and Press
Awards and Honors
Emmy Award, Outstanding Interactive Media
Peabody Award, Immersive and Interactive
SXSW Special Jury Recognition for Immersive Journalism
SXSW Film Festival 2021, World Premiere
78th Venice International Film Festival of La Biennale di Venezia, Best of VR
VRHAM! Festival 2021, VRHAMMY Grand Prize
NewImages Festival 2021, Special Jury Prize
Online Journalism Awards 2021, Excellence in Immersive Storytelling
Online Journalism Awards 2021, Excellence and Innovation in Visual Digital Storytelling
Overseas Press Club, The Joe and Laurie Dine Award (citation)
Support
This project was supported by the Pulitzer Center, Eyebeam Center for the Future of Journalism, and Online News Association.