Director: Hilla Medalia, Shosh Shlam | Israel/USA | Documentary | 2014 | 74 mins
Film source: Kino Lorber
Sponsor: Champlain College and VTIFF
In 2008, China became the first country to classify Internet addiction as a clinical disorder. Today, there are more than 200 military-style treatment centers in China for youths suffering from the affliction known in Mandarin as wangyin. Co-directed in fly-on-the-wall style by Israeli filmmakers Hilla Medalia and Shosh Shlam, Web Junkie takes us inside one of these boot camps, where compulsive online gamers are subjected to rigorous exercise and therapy sessions designed to rid their minds and bodies of the addictive sway of role-playing games like World of Warcraft. Compassionate yet unflinching, Web Junkie examines the effects of Internet addiction on both the teenage patients and their often bewildered and belligerent parents. And like Spike Jonze’s Her, it suggests that modern human discourse is increasingly gravitating toward an alternate cyber-reality, where real life becomes indistinguishable from the comforting blur of ones and zeroes on a computer screen.