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# In ESHRAQ, you play a soul that sets worlds in motion
- URL: https://www.killscreen.com/in-eshraq-you-play-a-soul-that-sets-worlds-in-motion/
- Published: 2026-11-12T19:47:30.000Z
- Updated: 2026-11-12T19:47:30.000Z
- Description: Ali Eslami's Unreal Engine cognitive playground, built from Suhrawardi's philosophy of light, premieres in IDFA's free DocLab Exhibition, Nov. 13 to 22.
- Author: Kill Screen Staff
- Tags: IDFA, DocLab, simulation, Unreal Engine, Amsterdam, Ali Eslami, #events, Events

Event details

When

Nov. 13 to 22, 2026

Where

DocLab Exhibition at de Brakke Grond, Amsterdam

Cost

Free; entry tickets through IDFA

*ESHRAQ* is an interactive work by Ali Eslami in which the player is a soul. It possesses agents, from floating spheres to human figures, and sets modular worlds in motion with spells of light. The levels model real places, including the Ziggurat of Ur and an Amsterdam canal. IDFA's [program notes](https://festival.idfa.nl/en/film/88ea9b87-760b-488b-a921-99bcbc8a493e/eshraq/?ref=killscreen.com) describe a game with no fixed ending, which Eslami calls a "cognitive playground."

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The 2024 trailer for **ESHRAQ*. Watch it with sound [on the artist's channel](https://vimeo.com/1239842713?ref=killscreen.com), or see the new Story Mode trailer in [the announcement](https://www.instagram.com/p/DfT91NFgqRt/?ref=killscreen.com).

The title comes from Ishraq, the Illuminationist philosophy of Shahab al-Din Suhrawardi, the 12th-century Persian thinker. A new Story Mode, introduced in [the latest trailer](https://www.instagram.com/p/DfT91NFgqRt/?ref=killscreen.com), offers a guided path through the work in three chapters, starting in a Persian caravanserai. The piece is built in Unreal Engine 5.

*ESHRAQ* premieres in the free DocLab Exhibition at de Brakke Grond in Amsterdam, Nov. 13 to 22, as part of IDFA DocLab. Entry tickets are free and reserved through IDFA. Production is by Siuli Ko for K.O. Productions, with sound by Shahin Entezami.

Eslami, born in Iran in 1991 and based in Amsterdam, has shown at DocLab since 2016, when *DeathTolls Experience* won an IDFA DocLab Award. The virtual world *False Mirror* followed, and *Nerd\_Funk*, made with Mamali Shafahi, won a Golden Calf for Best Interactive in 2020\. Killscreen also covered [DocLab's 20th-anniversary restorations](https://www.killscreen.com/idfa-doclab-restores-xr-classics-for-its-20th-edition/).

![](https://storage.ghost.io/c/25/84/2584b75d-4bd6-4cce-8259-f1d1c65abbb5/content/images/2026/11/eshraq-frame-45.jpg)

![](https://storage.ghost.io/c/25/84/2584b75d-4bd6-4cce-8259-f1d1c65abbb5/content/images/2026/11/eshraq-frame-70.jpg)

![](https://storage.ghost.io/c/25/84/2584b75d-4bd6-4cce-8259-f1d1c65abbb5/content/images/2026/11/eshraq-frame-95.jpg)

Frames from the **ESHRAQ* trailer.

Work like Eslami's rarely gets more than a festival listing anywhere else. Killscreen gives it an argument, and the free newsletter brings you the next one.

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