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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.
Watch Reeducated
Over the past four years, Chinese authorities have turned Xinjiang, the largest region in the country, into one of the most advanced police states in the world. In the spring of 2017, officials in Xinjiang began imprisoning thousands of Uighurs, Kazakhs, and other predominantly Muslim minorities in secret extrajudicial detention camps. 

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.
Watch "How Reeducated Was Made"
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 feature investigation, 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. They are the first-ever Emmy and Peabody awards won by The New Yorker.

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)
Behind the story: Reporting on Xinjiang
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Reviews & Praise
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Peabody Awards: "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 ..."

Other Press

The New Yorker Radio Hour with Ben Mauk and Raffi Khatchadourian
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The Postscript: Stories That Matter with Ben Mauk

​Variety

Human Rights Film Festival (Berlin) Podcast

A Good Refugee Podcast with Ben Mauk and Mehmet Tohti

Quan Arribin Els Marcians [TV interview in Catalan]

Eyebeam
Credits

Featuring
Erbaqyt Otarbai
Orynbek Koksebek
Amanzhan Seituly

Project Developed by
Ben Mauk
Sam Wolson

Director
Sam Wolson

Artist
Matt Huynh

Research and Reporting
Ben Mauk

Executive Producers
Soo-Jeong Kang
Monica Racic

Lead Animator and Technical Supervisor
Nicholas Rubin

Senior Editor
Brian Redondo

Producers
Ben Mauk
Sam Wolson
Nicholas Rubin
Matt Huynh

Sound Designer/Composer
Jon Bernson

Assistant Animator
Oliver Carr

Lead Compositor
Noel Paul

VFX Artist
Eddy Moya

Story Edit
Ben Mauk
Sam Wolson

Animation Studio
Dirt Empire

Titles Designer
Maxx Berkowitz

Additional Title Designer
Sandra Garcia

Color Grading
Noel Paul

Ink Bleed
Matvey Rezanov

Artist Assistant
M. J. Steele

English-Language Recording Engineer
Asqat Yerkimbay

Kazakh/English Audio
Asqat Yerkimbay
Baubek Sagyndyq

English-Language Voice-Over Artists
Nurbek Matzhani
Asqat Yerkimbay
Anonymous

Kazakh-Language Recording Engineer
Sam Wolson

Transcription and Translations
Dauren Aben
Anonymous

Map Locations of Detention Centers
Nathan Ruser
Australian Strategic Policy Institute

Fact Checker
Linnea Feldman Emison

Singing
Erbaqyt Otarbai

Special Thanks
Gene Bunin
The Xinjiang Victims Database
Nathan Ruser
Darren Byler
Sonya Teich
Christina Gossmann
Carleen Coulter
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