Refugee Storytelling and Interactive Socio-Political Films

Abstract

Interactive films have contributed to the viewers/users’ increasing storytelling engagement with social issues and events. With the rise of interactivity and refugee films, previous forms and storytelling methods have been changed and reformed in hybridity and as emerging immersive technologies.
 While these technological developments increase the overall complexity of the storytelling’s interface, they forced many users to reexamine their understanding of what they see and experience in this mediated world. Users must have a foundational knowledge of media literacy to interact with its interface and reap the benefits meaningfully. At the same time, the machine-based advances in interactivity can be referred to as the ‘interface of knowledge.’ Which type of social engagement has been created through interactive technological storytelling? Which social engagement or subject is more appropriate or efficient for interactive narratives? Do refugee stories and discourses contribute to interactive engagement?
 The popularization and celebration of immersive technologies, such as virtual reality and interactive films, requires significant financial spending power, digital literacy, and access to specific resources and technologies, which most of their subject do not have access to. Therefore, the barrier to approaching these immersive technologies is relatively high and inaccessible for the vast majority.
 This research aims to analyze a series of interactive films focusing on refugees’ storytelling, politics and aesthetics to examine their socio-political engagement. But first, what refugee stories have that appeal and make all these practitioners opt for a more engaging narrative medium? What is the refugee’s contribution or uniqueness that engages creators and viewers/users/players to adventure in their disarray? A strong connection with people whose lives are far from most of the users’ reality creating and being present within distant worlds calls the attention to the traditional cinematic narrative, which often fails to rouse the audience.
 In this paper, I argue that in interactive narratives, refugee characters and stories redefine the agency and potential of traditional film storytelling while granting the ability to recreate their history/fate. Also, these stories can engender a change in the world or redone the world with a sense of justice for dependable and trustful characters. Refugees possess an allegory of fantasy and unachievable reality that comfort their users. Characters without faces or names, but with well-known and reliable stories, make the users closer to the situation (moral aspect) and responsible (political sense) for their future.