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About
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The Installation
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The App
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The Enemy Around the World
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Making of
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News Feed
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Credits
The Enemy is always invisible. When he becomes visible, he ceases to be the enemy.
The Enemy brings you face-to-face with combatants from three conflict zones: with the Maras in Salvador, in the Democratic Republic of the Congo, and in Israel and Palestine. Their testimonies and confessions about their lives, experiences, and perspectives on war will allow you to better understand their motivations… and their humanity.
Discover the Making of
Karim Ben Khelifa’s 15-year career as a war photographer has been driven by an ever-more ambitious quest to address a crucial issue: what is the use of war images if they fail to change people’s attitudes towards war and the suffering and violence it causes? What is the use of these images if they fail to change our minds, if they don’t bring peace? The Enemy breaks with the media’s usual war imagery. By giving voice to those who carry violence within themselves, by letting them introduce themselves and explain their motives and dreams, this project not only confronts us with the perspectives of combatants, it also causes us to confront our own.
We make sense of the world through stories and we remember it through experiences.
Karim Ben Khelifa
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The Virtual Reality Installation
Meet face-to-face with combatants in a virtual-reality experience where you will hear testimonies from both sides of the same conflict.
Discover Tour Dates
Désirez-vous recevoir une alerte si l'expérience VR s'installe bientôt près de chez vous ?
Tour Dates
The Enemy - Immersive experience (VR) Geneva International Film Festival (GIFF)
November 2nd - November 10th 2018
Geneva
more info
The Enemy - Tel Aviv International Film Festival
June 18th - June 24th 2017
Tel Aviv
more info
The Enemy - World Tour Premiere
May 18th - June 4th 2017
Institut du monde arabe - Paris
more info
The Enemy - North American Premiere at the MIT
October 5th - December 31st 2017
MIT Museum - Boston
more info
TThe Enemy: a virtual reality experience at Phi Centre
February 10th - March 10st 2018
Phi Centre - Montreal
more info
The Augmented-Reality App
Meet combatants in augmented reality through your smartphone. Hear testimonies from both sides of the same conflict and step into the community of The Enemy.
Available on Google Play, you can also download the app developped with ARKit on the App Store.
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Close Legend
How many are we?
155 000
Encounters
In
066
Countries
On
3
Continents
235 567
Users
Most Active Country
États-Unis
Key
The Combattants
The Installation
Making of
There were a number of challenges in creating The Enemy:
To access reclusive and often out-of-reach individuals active in armed groups. To come equipped with the right material and the best team. To create a simple backdrop, a neutral light, and a professional studio in difficult locations. To master the technology of 3-D scans, to explain it to the combatants, and to perform scans of each of them.
And while on location, to precisely record the body language of each of these men as they speak, as they move and as they look at me with eyes that say so much.
Then, back in Paris, to arrange all of these interviews by each tenth of a second and to put them in a spatial dimension. To integrate this material into a new form of journalism. To think, to test, to design, to rethink, to test again, to develop, to start all over again, in Montreal, New York or Paris. To boil down the countless conversations with producers, team members, engineers and techs, scientists, designers, and users to the essentials in order to create a genuine virtual experience of a face-to-face encounter. To build a fine-tuned tracking system. To detect one visitor, then three, then twenty. To bring individuals closer to you and to bring you closer to them through a headset or a mobile phone.
To move in synch as new technologies appear and evolve, to align our intentions with the hardware’s potential. To embrace the many unknown parts until they are no longer unknown. More than three years ago, we launched a production that brought my team and me to four continents. We invited more than 1,500 testers with very different backgrounds, ethnicities and origins. We presented parts of the work in academic settings, at festivals, and in schools. All of this to address one single question: Could I be you if I was on the other side? We make sense of the world through stories, and we remember it through experiences. What happens then when someone else’s story becomes your experience?
News Feed
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Electronic Press Kit
Press
May 19, 2017
Le Courrier du Parlement
“War reporting of a new kind. The documentary of the future?”
“Thanks to this new perspective, members of the public become engaged participants in journalism.”
May 17, 2017
RTL
“The Enemy, or the virtual revolution in war reporting.”
“Experience war from the inside to better understand it, thanks to virtual reality.”
October 27th 2016
The New York Times
“Meeting ‘the Other’ Face to Face By Randy Kennedy - The New York Times”
Then the portraits disappear, replaced by doors, which open. In walk the two combatants — Abu Khaled, a fighter for the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine, and Gilad Peled, an Israeli soldier ...
June 23rd 2016
The Jerusalem Post
“Editor's notes: Defining the enemy by Yaakov Katz - The Jerusalem Post”
It was in January 2009 and photojournalist Karim Ben Khelifa was visiting the Gaza Strip in the aftermath of Cast Lead, Israel’s first large-scale anti-terrorist operation since its unilateral withdrawal from the Palestinian territory four years earlier…
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Visitor's book
Thank you for helping us to see the human being instead of focusing on the war.
La, Tel Aviv
An unprecedented experience, in both form and content. A sensitive subject on which one thinks, wrongly, to have a point of view.
Asma, Paris
Overwhelming. I had a hard time coming down ... What a message and opportunity for self-reflection. Congratulations to everyone on the creative team for taking us on this journey.
Nancy, Paris
A fascinating experience! Perfectly captures the reality of war, and humanity.
Maxence, Paris
Amazing experience everyone should experience. Really eye opening and great way to use technology in an enlightening way for once.
Yasmen, Tel Aviv
Karim Ben Khelifa and his team have pushed documentary VR a huge way forward. The Enemy manages to lead viewers through a coherent, engaging experience for a full quarter tour. They've brought in structure and empathy as only story-tellers can.
Fergus Pitt, New-York
The Enemy is an unusual opportunity to see a fantastic new way to tell stories. (…) It takes journalism art and storytelling in directions I haven’t seen before.
Sree Sreenivasan, Toronto
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A project by
Karim Ben Khelifa
Camera lucida team
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Executive Producer
François Bertrand
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Line Producer
Chloé Jarry
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Project Manager
Hélène Adamo
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Production Manager
Vincent Décis
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Assisted by
Charlotte Zipper
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Graphic Designer
Gordon
France Télévisions Nouvelles Écritures
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Communication
Agnès Desplas
Léo Fauvel
National Film Board of Canada
Emissive
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Executive assistant
Sandrine Alexandre
Dpt.
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Executive producer
and Creative director
Nicolas S.Roy
Shooting in Israël / Palestine
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Director
Karim Ben Khelifa
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Assistant director
Sélim Harbi
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DOP shootings
Jean-Gabriel Leynaud
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Assisted by
Quentin Esperse
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Photogrammetry and 3D scan
Fabien Barati
Shooting in Democratic Republic of Congo
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Director
Karim Ben Khelifa
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Assistant director
Sélim Harbi
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DOP shootings
Jean-Gabriel Leynaud
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Assisted by
Quentin Esperse
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Photogrammetry and 3D scan
Fabien Barati
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Location manager
Adolph Basengezi
Shooting in El Salvador
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Director
Karim Ben Khelifa
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Assistant director
Sélim Harbi
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DOP shootings
Quentin Esperse
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Cameraman and 3D scan
Yoray Liberman
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Location manager
Paula Rosales
Post Production Unit Image and sound
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Sound engineer
Philippe Chariot
Bruno Lagoarde
Matthieu Cochi
nEric Wager
Marie Muller
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Head Grip
Vincent Blasco
Jean Chesneau
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Tennessee Charles
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Technical instruments
Optitrack - Natural Point
Human-Computer Interaction producer
Trailer
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Trailer Director and editor
David Fernandes
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Assisted by
Hélène Adamo
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Trailer DOP
Antoine Goetghebeur
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Trailer mixing
Bruno Lagoarde
Trailer #2
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Sound Editing
Emmanuel Alberola
Trailer #3
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Video excerpts
Jeffrey Trunell
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Supported by
The TFI New Media Fund
The Ford Foundation
The Sundance Institute New Frontier Program
The Doris Duke Foundation for Islamic Arts'
Doris Duke New Frontier Fellowship and the Open Society Foundations
The MIT Open Documentary Lab et le Arts Center for Art, Science and Technology at MIT
Centre national du cinéma et de l’image animée
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The Enemy has also been supported by Google Digital News Initiative.
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For their help and support during the entire production stage, productions teams and the author wish to thank:
Voyelle Acker, Tina Ahrens, Antoine Allard, François Asseman, Pauline Augrain, Markus Badde, Antonin Baudry, David Beja, Pervenche Beurier, Ludovic Blecher, Léontine Bob, SokLinh Cheng, Olivia Colo, Maya Dagnino, Juan B. Diaz, Rémy Dorne, Mathieu Fournet, Aude Gauthier, Chantal Gishoma, Patrick Gonidec, Thais Herminie, Katherine Higgins, Ingrid Kopp, Jérôme Lecanu, Philippa-Jane Mothershill, Oumar N’Daw, Bruno Patino, Rémy Pflimlin, Alexis Raison, Christine Siméone, Kamal Sinclair, Michele Slatter, Caspar Sonnen, William Uricchio, Doug Weinstock, Sarah Wolozin.
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The author would like to thank Boris Razon for his involvment to intiate the project.
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Production teams would like to thank the following institutions for hosting VR experience user testing in their facilities:
Le Forum des images (Corinne Béal et Michaël Swierczynski)
L’IRI - Institut de recherche et d’innovation du centre Pompidou (Vincent Puig et Nicolas Sauret)
Le Carrefour numérique² de la Cité des Sciences et de l'Industrie (Bruno Maquart et Pierre Ricono)
L’INA - Institut national de l’Audiovisuel (Kanele Bazin, Amandine Collinet et Marie Tomat)
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Special thanks to
Abu Khaled, Gilad, Jean de Dieu, Patient, Jorge Alberto et Amilcar Vladimir
© Camera lucida productions/ France Télévisions / ONF / Dpt / Emissive - 2017