A mother and son revisit the medical emergency that reshaped their lives, and the remarkable fragments that remain of that time, in this intimate blend of virtual reality and performance film.
As Mine Exactly is a half-hour performance for an audience of one, by documentary filmmaker Charlie Shackleton.
Immersive Art and XR Award, 2022 BFI London Film Festival ‘A work that creates an extraordinary level of intimacy. Charlie's piece is a showcase of love and empathy, and all of the jurors were deeply moved by it’ – Jury Head Misan Harriman
‘Profoundly moving ... Shackleton creates a space of transparency and invites the viewer to experience a new form of intimacy’ – Patrick Gamble, Little White Lies
‘An 'anti-VR piece' narrated live by its author, seated directly across from his headset-strapped audience of one, Shackleton's desktop reflection on his mother's epilepsy was one of the most moving artistic experiences to be had this year, and another fine notch in the filmmaker's lengthy conceptual belt’ – Inney Prakash
‘A haunting and moving portrait of family and resilience ... while it might not seem that the viewer is being asked to do something, they in fact are: to perform active listening’ – Karen Cirillo, XRMust
‘A VR experience as poignant as it is ingenious... Continuing his pioneering expansion of the documentary form, Charlie Shackleton relates the onset and management of his mother's epilepsy via a unique virtual-reality set-up tailored to the viewer’ – Ben Nicholson, Sight & Sound
‘I felt my eyes misting over inside my headset. I was simultaneously reminded of both my proximity to the story and my distance from it. To participate in an experience like this is to enter a space where you must actively negotiate the moral conflicts, ethical boundaries, and emotional realities of "consuming" documentary films, instead of simply bearing witness to them. In doing so, Shackleton and I were able to create a new kind of connection’ – Simran Hans, Mubi Notebook
‘Sharp and searching... watching VR is often an isolating, awkward experience, but the proximity here between viewer and maker makes it feel intense and communal’ – Matt Turner, Sight & Sound
‘Simple and incredibly effective ... I have met people who have been working in VR for much longer than Charlie Shackleton and yet understand much less about its potential and how to make the most of its limitations’ – Agnese Pietrobon, XRMust
‘By actively mediating [the story], Shackleton draws attention to the ways we already reframe and perform our pasts, both in how we personally process events and how we relate them to others’ – Dan Schindel, Hyperallergic
