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<\/p>\n\n\tIn the recesses of the internet, where reality can feel increasingly fuzzy, one young Norwegian man lacking offline mobility built a world of his own. Mats Steen, the subject of the poignant Netflix documentary The Remarkable Life of Ibelin, formed a digital community that transcended the severe muscular dystrophy he\u2019d developed as a child. While his parents fretted about the many obsessive hours he spent playing World of Warcraft, Steen was using the role-playing game to develop deep friendships and find a voice he couldn\u2019t always access in a literal sense.<\/p>\n
\n\tThe past year, The Remarkable Life of Ibelin has won a Peabody Award and become what director Benjamin Ree calls a \u201cnational treasure\u201d in Norway. Now it\u2019s up against I Am: Celine Dion and Patrice: The Movie for the Emmys\u2019 exceptional merit in documentary filmmaking prize, a category nominated by a special jury.<\/p>\n
\n\tBut for Ree, the biggest rewards are the responses he has received from people throughout the world who see themselves in Steen\u2019s experience. One American viewer debating whether to get the tracheostomy needed to prolong his life said he decided to proceed with it once Ibelin showed him the joy available through gaming.<\/p>\n
\n\tRee, a former Reuters journalist who also made the acclaimed 2020 documentary The Painter and the Thief, came to Ibelin with a personal connection. His parents were friends with Steen\u2019s folks when the boys were young, and Steen\u2019s uncle was one of Ree\u2019s grade-school teachers. \u201cFor me, this was a small Norwegian story,\u201d he tells The Hollywood Reporter.<\/p>\n
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\t\t\t\t\tSteen\u2019s World of Warcraft character Ibelin<\/p>\n
\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\tCourtesy of Netflix<\/p>\n
\n\tAfter Steen died in 2014 at age 25, Ree spent four years with the Steen family to chronicle his dynamic life. Steen had left behind the password to a blog he\u2019d kept, and from there his parents discovered the friends they never knew he had, some of whom revealed that Steen\u2019s generous spirit had saved their lives. Their son, the Steens learned, experienced many of the same things his ambulatory peers might have. As Ibelin, his buff World of Warcraft avatar named after Orlando Bloom\u2019s character in the Ridley Scott epic Kingdom of Heaven, Steen had romances and regularly doled out advice to his pals.<\/p>\n
\n\tAs Ree was tying together multiple perspectives on Steen\u2019s experiences, he looked to several highbrow works of art with overlapping POVs as reference points \u2014 chief among them Orson Welles\u2019 Citizen Kane and William Faulkner\u2019s Absalom, Absalom! Using a 42,000-page transcript of Steen and his clique\u2019s computer-generated interactions, Ree hired animators and YouTubers to re-create scenarios from the game that would expand upon Steen\u2019s blog and his parents\u2019 reflections. Their one job qualification: 20,000 hours clocked playing WoW.<\/p>\n
\n\tRees restructured the film many times based on test-screening feedback, determined to make it engaging to nongamers like him. He likens the results to a \u201csymphony\u201d returning to the same melodies in different ways over the course of a piece.<\/p>\n
\n\t\u201cIf you look into the future, more and more people will use virtual worlds to communicate,\u201d Ree says. \u201cWe need to tell those stories and make those stories accessible for everyone. That is what we\u2019ve tried to do here, so even my grandmother would feel included.\u201d <\/p>\n