“I know you have found it difficult lately. It’s okay.”

Everyday digital devices are no longer just tools; they have become gateways to a new multi-layered reality, an exponentially growing augmented universe that we experience largely without a physical connection. As human beings made of flesh, we now spend most of our time in a digital landscape, seeking happiness, wealth, relationships, knowledge, and experiences. What is today’s reality made of?

With Real, Adele Tulli takes us on a visually striking kaleidoscopic journey exploring what it means to be human in the digital age.

The obligation to be beautiful at all times leads to downfall

At the heart of Tulli’s documentary is the idea that there was a time when reality consisted of tangible objects, bodily relationships, experiences and events taking place in real physical spaces. Recently, however, an inexorable process of digital acceleration has profoundly transformed our planet, our societies and ourselves: the flat, luminous surfaces of our screens function as portals to a disembodied world, a parallel digital multiverse where everything that exists is transformed, from the physics of oxygen and carbon to the physics of the electron and the logic of bits.

Thus, through a mosaic of stories filmed around the world, Real weaves a deeply evocative essayistic meditation on our current condition as digital humans. We discover the story of a family living for free (in exchange for their personal data) in a newly-built smart neighborhood in South Korea, filled with technological devices and data mining; of a queer community, exploring their gender identity and fluid sexuality through colorful non-humanoid digital avatars on a VR platform; patients at a clinic for internet addicts, confronting the consequences of their abuse; a live webcam model broadcasting adult content sessions from her home; a food delivery man, whose precarious working conditions prompted him to create his own vlog channel. And so, for better or worse, she explores the souls of those who have agreed to be filmed, giving life to a unique filmic experience that takes us into the disembodied world of the Web.

Real is presented at the VIFF on September 28 and 29, 2024.

Trailer