Immersion: Serious Games 3 (2009) dir. Harun Farocki

For Immersion, Harun Farocki went to visit a research centre near Seattle specialized in the development of virtual realities and computer simulations. One of their projects consists in using virtual reality (environments created to simulate this world) for therapeutic reasons for soldiers suffering traumas after the Iraq war. The double projection creates a parallel between animations and testimonies by soldiers reliving their mission, the explosions, gunshots and ambushes, their fears and their guilt. The chosen direct rendering and simplicity of the edit places us like the voyeur of a personal and difficult experience. The end is disconcerting since the last soldier, who one minute had been pleading his therapist to stop the program, looks at his audience and smiles with a detachment that sheds doubt on the authenticity of his account.