TEHRAN-Andisheh Cultural Center in Tehran will screen the 2024 Norwegian documentary “The Remarkable Life of Ibelin” by Benjamin Ree on Monday.

After screening at 5 p.m., the film will be reviewed in a session attended by film critics Saghi Soleimani and Mohsen Soleymani Fakher, ILNA reported.

In the movie, the secret life of a young World of Warcraft gamer is vividly reimagined when his online friends contact his family after his death.

Mats Steen, a Norwegian gamer, died of a degenerative muscular disease in 2014 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.

“The Remarkable Life of Ibelin” provides a fascinating counterargument about how online gaming at least can be a lifeline for some individuals who find themselves isolated in the real world.

Born in 1989, Mats Steen started out like many other Norwegian children of his generation: energetic, sweet-natured, and usually pale. However, his parents Robert and Trude soon discovered that he had Duchenne muscular dystrophy, a genetic condition that eroded his ability to move and breathe and which would eventually kill him at the age of 25. By that point in 2014, Robert, Trude, and Mats’ sister Mia knew that Mats spent hours of his life online playing World of Warcraft using special equipment to accommodate his disability and had been publishing a blog about his life.

Then they signed on to the blog to announce his death, thinking hardly anyone would read it – and a flood of emails came back, for it turned out that Mats, who had been logging into Warcraft by the name Ibelin and using an able-bodied red-haired avatar, had built up an extensive network of friends over the years. Ibelin had courted women in this digital world and was even a bit of pa layer at one point, but more importantly, he was deeply liked for his kindness and empathy. 

Mats’ sage advice had helped a mother and her son (a young man with autism) build their own relationship in Denmark through online interaction, for example. Mats may have spent most of his time alone (apart from health workers and support staff) in a flat upstairs from his family, but WoW gave him a community.

Using the archive which recorded thousands of words of interactions between Mats/Ibelin and his friends, the film recreates Ibelin’s digital life, using animation in the style of WoW. 

More than just a uniquely told portrait of unlikely friendships, Ibelin explores the stigmatization of gaming and the challenges so many parents have in understanding their children’s daily virtual experiences.

SS/SAB