In darkness, Robert and Trude Steen, the parents of a disabled son who died, found extraordinary light.
Director Benjamin Ree’s documentary “The Remarkable Life of Ibelin” tells their story which began when their son Mats Steen, a Norwegian gamer, died of a degenerative muscular disease at the age of 25. Ibelin was the name of his character in World of Warcraft.
Ree read a story on social media about Mats. “I cried a lot after reading it,” Ree recalled in a virtual press conference, “It was extremely emotional.
“What intrigued me from the very beginning was how Robert and Trude thought their son had lived a very lonely, isolated life. Without friends.
“Only after his passing, they discovered that Mats had lived a very rich life. With friends. With love. All of those things.”
For the Steens “Ibelin” began when, four years after Mats’ death, an interview they’d given was published online by the Norwegian Broadcasting Company, then shared with national broadcasting companies all over: England, South America, Africa and India.
“Several directors from different parts of the world approached us,” Robert Steen said, “to do a movie or a documentary about our son. We turned all of them down. This was too personal, too emotional.
“Then my kid brother calls: ‘I have this friend Benjamin Ree who used to be one of my pupils in primary school. If you ever consider doing the story of Mats as a movie, it is Benjamin you should talk to.’ ”
As a parent, what it was like to discover their son’s online life?
“At first, we thought he was just sitting there in front of the screen playing,” Trude said. “But then we understood that all the avatars and the things we saw on the screen were real people, friends. But we didn’t understand that at first.”
“No,” Robert agreed. “We have, in a way, been through an incredible journey. And it didn’t start when Benjamin called us (in 2019). It didn’t even start 10 years ago when Mats passed away. It started 35 years ago when Mats was born.
“We lived together under the same roof for 25 years, four months, and 15 days. Then he passed away — and these last 10 years, we have learned so much about his life, in spite of the fact that we spent all of his life together with him 24/7.
“This is one of the many universal questions that Benjamin creates in this movie. Even the people we live together with every day, how much of their lives is it actually that we don’t know anything about?
“This is one of the things that we have been given the chance the last 10 years to try to understand.”
“The Remarkable Life of Ibelin” streams on Netflix Oct. 25.
