The second session of ‘5 Minutes’ on the 6th of March featured the film The Streamer, a hyperfiction project that will involve the viewer both on platforms and in cinemas.
According to director Lucas Figueroa, what’s new about this project is not the possibility of the viewer deciding the course of the story, as has already been done in literature with ‘choose your own adventure’ or in the series Black Mirror, but the fact that this is being brought to the big screen for the first time.

In The Streamer, the key premise is to ensure 'the survival of the protagonist', and to do so, viewers will have to choose between different options that will emerge throughout the film. 'It will be the first film co-created by the public in cinemas, a ‘choose your own adventure’ in which viewers will have to choose an option approximately every seven minutes', Figueroa said.

The methodology chosen to achieve this interaction with cinema audiences is not simple: each spectator will have a remote control with which to send their vote during a ten-second period in which the film 'doesn’t stop'. All cinemas will have a tool to count the votes and the option selected by the majority will be shown next. 'It’s nine films in one, so each cinema will create its own film or its own experience according to what the audience votes on'. 

'The consensus of the room creates the choice of scenes in real time', so that, according to the director, the film that viewers see will depend on variables such as the city, the type of audience, age or interests. 'In The Streamer, viewers will be able to choose whether they want a thriller, a comedy, a drama or a romantic film', said actor Javier Pereira. 'My character will be in extreme situations and the audience will be able to decide what will happen to me. It’s going to be a very big acting exercise, a real challenge on an acting and production level'.

This ‘cine-game’ project will be filmed during the summer and followed by a tour of screenings throughout the country, covering all autonomous communities. Talents and partners will be present at the events and it will be possible to see which film is the winner at each of the screenings. Both Figueroa and Pereira promise that The Streamer will be a thrilling 85 minutes in which you will have to help the main character to save himself.

Also present at the screening was Juan Luis Artacho, programmer at Cine Albéniz, Teatro Cervantes and Teatro Echegaray, who endorsed the importance of this project: 'Cinema is always in crisis and that’s why we must reinvent ourselves. I believe that this proposal can be an attractive way of attracting young audiences to cinemas'.