Over the last six days Sheffield Doc/Fest 2015 has been taking place all over the UK city. The event is a celebration of documentaries of all kinds, hosting rare screenings, exclusive talks and more. The first few days even saw an impressive virtual reality (VR) ‘Arcade’ put on display, with nine unique experiences for attendees to try out. The event concludes with an awards ceremony which this year has recognised one of the stand out VR experiences of that VR Arcade, Clouds Over Sidra.
The short documentary, created by Chris Milk and Gabo Arora, has been awarded the prize in the Interactive category of this year’s show. It follows Sidra, a twelve year old girl that has fled her home in Syria due to the ongoing crisis and found herself in Jordan’s Za’atari refugee camp. It provides a brief glimpse at the day-to-day life that these refugees endure with narration from Sidra herself. Viewers are taken closer to the situation than a standard screen could ever convey, joining children at school and families as they gather round to eat.