Deprogrammed (VR)
ABOUT
Deprogrammed takes the user on a virtual walk through the world of cult indoctrination. Told through the voices of three characters, DEPROGRAMMED, unfolds how they became completely enveloped by extremist ideologies. Diane was deceptively recruited into the Unification Church at the age of seventeen, Frank was a high-ranking member of a skinhead gang by the age of fifteen, and Mubin was ready to wage jihad before he graduated from High School. Combining documentary storytelling and a VR landscape, DEPROGRAMMED is a meditative and, at times, de-stabilizing experience that humanizes those behind acts of terror and self-annihilation.
Mia Donovan is an award-winning filmmaker based in Montreal. She made three documentary features: INSIDE LARA ROXX (2011), DEPROGRAMMED (2015) and DOPE IS DEATH (2020). She was the recipient of the Don Haig Award for outstanding achievement as an emerging filmmaker in 2012. Her films have been presented worldwide at film festivals, on TV broadcasts, theatrically and on digital platforms such as Netflix. In 2016 she wrote and directed her first virtual reality experience called DEPROGRAMMED VR (2016) which won the coveted IDFA DocLab Award for Digital Storytelling that year. Her most recent documentary DOPE IS DEATH premiered at the 2020 True/False Film Festival and went on to screen at dozens of International Film Festivals. Most recently, Donovan released her first podcast series called DOPE IS DEATH THE PODCAST which was programmed as an ‘opening act’ at the 2021 Hot Docs Podcast Festival. She is currently an Artist in Residence at Concordia University in Montreal.
CREDITS
Bob Moore
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