Clouds over Sidra

Documentary, 8 min 35 sec, dir. Gabo Arora, USA, With.in for UN

Meet Sidra. This charming 12-year-old girl will guide you through her temporary home: The Zaatari Refugee Camp in Jordan. Zaatari is home to 130,000 Syrians fleeing violence and war, and children make up half the camp’s population. In this lyrical VR film, Sidra leads you through her daily life: Eating, sleeping, learning and playing in the vast desert city of tents.

I like works by Gabo Arora. And what I like the most, is that these works give many of us the basic understanding of technology and, more importantly, why we have to choose this technology. Because it starts to make a difference, because it immerse, because it’s more real than we could expect. Because we are breaking the feeling of being a stranger sitting in the film theatre and becoming observers inside the story.

It is not just a VR documentary. It’s a model of a medium which is used with the focus of the audience which it should reach, as well as with the emotions and actions you want them to get out of it. It’s not “film to show the problem”, it’s a work to help to solve the problem.

And in those early days of VR we need such works to show, that VR is not only for geeks and those who need entertainment. We have to show that it is a form of art which deserves an attention and might be much more efficient in reaching the goal of bigger corporations than just entertainment.