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Gaming can be a transformative experience for some players, and that was especially true for Mats Steen. He was a young Norwegian man who was stricken with Duchenne muscular dystrophy, a degenerative disease that ultimately took his life at only 25 years old. Steen’s disease may have prevented him from living a normal life, but Netflix’s new documentary, The Remarkable Life of Ibelin, demonstrates how he was able to carve out a place for himself in World of Warcraft.
The Remarkable Life of Ibelin won the World Cinema Documentary audience award at the 2024 Sundance Film Festival, and it’s not hard to see why. Although Steen died in 2014, he left behind a lot of friends that he made from his countless hours of playing Warcraft. In the game, his character, Ibelin, was free to do almost everything Steen could not. And it gave him an outlet that kept him from being isolated by the rest of the world.
Activision Blizzard lent out its World of Warcraft assets for this film in order to allow animators the opportunity to recreate some of Steen’s interactions with other players through his Ibelin persona. That includes a kiss that was given to Ibelin which meant the world to Steen, who didn’t have that kind of interaction with women outside of the game.
Filmmaker Benjamin Ree assembled The Remarkable Life of Ibelin from footage of Steen recorded by his family, in addition to interviewing the friends and other players he met through Warcraft. Through them, the legend of Ibelin and the story of Mats Steen will live on.
Netflix will premiere The Remarkable Life of Ibelin on October 25.
