SYNOPSIS
Ekiem Barbier and Guilhem Causse offer a unique experience to Victor Assié, a young actor questioning the meaning of his profession: to explore an online simulation of daily life as an avatar and meet its users, while playing his own role. Through his complicated but hilarious peregrinations, he discovers a new yet familiar world.
REVIEW
From Marlowe Drive (2017) to the acclaimed Knit’s Island (2023), Ekiem Barbier and Guillaume Causse have built a body of work in machinima, using video games as both a creative workshop and a kind of second life.
In their five-part series In Real Life, they invite a newcomer into this virtual realm: Victor, an actor by trade. Accustomed to scripted roles, Victor now uses an avatar to simulate life in a digital world. Could this environment offer freedoms reality does not? Yet even here, he must earn a driver’s license, buy a car, and shoulder the obligations of his profession. Above all, making a living as an actor proves just as difficult as in the real world.
As Victor roams this microcosm—built by those determined to make the virtual feel more real than life—the two directors, now seasoned masters of the machinima documentary, capture his journey as a playful, surprising ethnography. The film invites us to reconsider the meaning of labor, identity, and human connection in an age when the boundary between the virtual and the real grows ever more porous.
DIRECTOR'S NOTE
In this world that might appear dystopian at first glance, everything feels strangely familiar. The police are everywhere, you can get pulled over for speeding, and landing a gig as an actor seems like nothing short of a miracle. Following the public success of Knit’s Island, the filmmakers plunge once again into a parallel world where real people, crafting fictional versions of themselves, often strive to be more real than they are in real life. An absurd and hilarious five-part journey, in which surprise is the only certainty.
CONTACT
Les Films Invisibles
boris@lesfilmsinvisibles.com
