‘LifeLike,’ Partly Shot in VRChat, Tells the Story of a Fractured Family’s Struggle With Mortality

Human mortality, the need for connection, and the yearning for transcendence take center stage LifeLike (Bir Arada Only), the third feature film from Turkish writer-director Ali Vatansever (Saf, El Yazisi). But by shooting some scenes inside the online virtual reality platform VRChat, the movie also tells a very timely story and explores a new cinematic language.

LifeLike world premieres in the main competition program of the 29th edition of the Tallinn Black Nights Film Festival (PÖFF) in Estonia on Sunday.

“On the 20th floor of a social housing, impending death tears a family apart. İzzet, 19, in the final stages of illness, finds solace in VRChat,” reads a synopsis for LifeLike. “His mother, Reyhan, takes refuge in social media, gaining online fame for her desperate attempts to heal him, while his father, Abdi, a withdrawn school-bus driver, seeks comfort in prayer. Reyhan becomes fixated on a wild plant rumored to cure cancer. Abdi, lost in faith, neglects his work. In his virtual home, İzzet invites a girl to his real one, leading to disappointment and a failed suicide attempt.”

The result: the family fractures. But then Abdi converts his school bus into a room with a view and takes İzzet on the road, using the allegedly healing plant as an excuse. “As father and son share precious time together, Abdi changes course, setting off in search of a miracle after all,” the synopsis concludes.

The film embraces moral ambiguity as it explores the three family members’ choices, instead of taking sides or looking to provide easy answers. VR serves as a vehicle for the movie to explore humans’ longing to transcend physical limitations.

LifeLike stars Fatih Al, Esra Kızıldoğan, and Onur Gözeten. The actors performed not only in the “real” world, but also as avatars in VRChat, with the director present with them and filming them in this virtual universe, creating parallel universes that both feature in LifeLike.

Produced by Vatansever’s Terminal Film, Aktan Güşar Sanatlar in Turkey, Greece’s Foss Productions, and Romania’s Da Clique, it was co-produced with Turkey’s Tolan Film and Lighting Doctors. The movie was also supported by the Turkish Ministry of Culture, the Turkish national public broadcaster TRT, and the Greek public broadcaster ERT.

Vatansever, who also works on immersive VR experiences and teaches film production and VR at Koç University in Istanbul, will share his experience with telling stories through virtual worlds during a Nov. 20 director’s workshop, entitled “LifeLike: a VR Case Study,” at the 24th edition of the Industry@Tallinn & Baltic Event.

Vatansever talked to THR about LifeLike and the process used to create it, humans’ needs, desires, and the role technology plays in them, and what’s next for him.

Please tell me a bit about the inspiration and idea for the film, and how you developed it to include the scenes in the VR world.

I was struggling during the writing process to get into the mind of a boy whose life is coming to an end. And I was trying to understand his experiences and priorities in a bedridden time of his life. I was introduced to a short documentary filmmaker from London, Joe, who was working on finding cinematic ways to shoot films in virtual reality through VRChat. And it hit me immediately that there are new ways and means to tell stories in virtual life. I said, “Let’s explore this.” But I should underline that the reason for it was to understand the human condition of being at that stage of life.

The technology does indeed feel like a mirror or prism, through which you explore human relationships..

Yes, the film is about the family being disconnected because of this end-of-life [experience]. But slowly they understand the meaning of being present and getting connected again. The mother is on social media, while the father is in his faith world, the son is in his virtual world, trying to live forever. In a sense, he wants to clone himself for eternity. And so I was exploring this idea that there is nothing too different to that virtual world.

I heard you actually filmed in the virtual world?

I was holding the camera inside the virtual reality, VRChat, with my director avatar, and the actors were wearing their headsets. They were in the avatars in these scenes in this virtual reality world, and they were acting. We were capturing their body, hand and lip movements, the whole performance.

How was that?

At some point, we all forgot that we were wearing headsets, and it was basically a regular production day. There is this virtual lake house scene. And the boy asks the girl to come to his house, his real house, and suddenly, we forgot that it was virtual. It was two people talking to each other, like in real life. And it was so dear to me to have all that technology, but to understand the very human condition.

I was showing the film to a dear friend in a rough cut, and he watched this virtual scene where the boy is running in the grassland. And he said, “Now I understand why the young generation is spending time in virtual reality, because it’s a reality to them.”

So, it gave me the chance to get into the mind of a newer generation. For them, there is no boundary between the real and the virtual. At the end of the day, I think we are losing those boundaries.

We are designing a VR experience for right outside the theater at the world premiere. The audience can basically transport themselves behind the scenes of this virtual moment, where I was holding the camera and the actors were there.

So, how do you feel about the rise of new technology, given all the debates around what AI and other newer technologies mean for cinema?

For us creators, these are just fantastic tools that are making our lives easier, more convenient, when we are exploring new stories. Of course, I have my darkest moments. But the darkest moments are there for me to shed light on my own fears. And if we are afraid, why not make films about it [the fact] that we are afraid? We’ve been doing so in science fiction since the invention of cinema.

There are scenes in LifeLikewhere the need for physical human connection also shines through, right?

Yes, there is a scene where [two characters’] hands touch. We can be behind all those buttons, all that technology, but at some time, we don’t need the buttons. We need the touch, when we feel the warmth. I think this is why we are having all the technology – to make us closer, to make us connected.

At the beginning of the film, all the technology, all the virtual world, all the social media, is for refuge, for safe spaces. But when they are so okay with wherever life takes them, if you are so okay with the presence, if you are immediately there, all those technologies are only there to bring us together. I think we are in the early stages of aligning ourselves as humanity in this rapidly changing world. We are also talking about artificial intelligence, but I think all that stuff is for us to redefine the boundaries of our physical life and be okay, be at ease with the human touch. The film is an exploration for me of what it means to live in this age.

I heard that Lifelike was also inspired by the first euthanasia lawsuit in modern Turkey. Can you maybe talk about that a little?

My writing process always starts with an idea, something extraordinary that hits me, and this was exactly what happened when my father told me about this news article about a father taking the life of his own son because the son was terminally ill. There were all those conflicting feelings, the empathy, the tiredness, and this conflict was so mesmerizing. Euthanasia is still a big taboo in Turkey. But I wanted to dive into it to understand what it means to search for the dignity to end your life.

This is a very polarized [issue]. We are always thinking you are either against it or pro. But at the end of the day, it’s so easy to hide behind those masks. These are big concepts. When there is a big concept, we are always either like or unlike. But I think what we should ask instead is what makes a life feel complete. For me, this is the major question. The human condition is too rich and deep for just black and white approaches to those big topics.

This is important to me, and also in my previous films. I start with big words and make those extraordinary words very mundane, because they are [about what] happens to any one of us.

Do you know what project you will take on next?

I spent six years of my life reflecting on death and dying, which took an incredible toll on me. I’m making films about my own darkness within. My next project will be about love. Not romantic love, but what it means to love someone, what it means to be loved, so the very condition of being loved.

It’s strange, because people say “dying.” We almost never use the word death. But in love, we don’t say love and loving. And I am very troubled by this, because we think about love as either zero or one. You are either in love or not. You wait until the moment that you feel in love, and before that, you never tell it. But I think it’s about loving. There is so much richness in loving that I want to explore. And I think one character should be artificial in that story.