Knit's Island: Documentary Shot Entirely Inside DayZ Video Game Screens at Trieste Festival

The documentary film 'Knit's Island,' created by Ekiem Barbier, Guilhem Causse, and Quentin L'helgoualc'h, is entirely shot within the video game DayZ by Bohemia Interactive. The film is an ethnographic and anthropological study set in a post-zombie apocalypse world where players collaborate and fight to survive. The filmmakers spent 963 hours as characters across the game's 250 square kilometer map, observing players who role-play their characters' lives, forming long-standing friendships, communities, and social structures, or venturing into fantasies of violence and dominance. As the documentary progresses, the boundary between virtual and physical worlds blurs: a player's child cries through the microphone, a mother leaves the game to check on her child, and a person confesses about their real life. The COVID-19 pandemic began in Europe during filming, adding another layer of fiction-reality overlap. The film will be screened on October 28, 2023, at 9 PM at Teatro Miela in Trieste, as part of the Trieste Science+Fiction Festival in collaboration with Italian Videogame Program (IVIPRO) for the IVIPRO Days, a video game subsection of the festival. IVIPRO is an association that facilitates collaboration between game developers and local entities to promote history, culture, and territories. The IVIPRO Days 2023 will take place on October 27-28 at DoubleTree by Hilton Trieste (free entry with registration).