‘I’m asking people to do a lot, but that’s what it means to be a human’: why one man made the first straight-to-VHS movie in 20 years

Roberto dos Santos is taking the hard route to releasing his first feature film, and is no fan of AI: ‘Someone once said that if your mum can do it, it doesn’t have value’

The new film This Is How the World Ends is a fine piece of work; the story of two siblings finding each other at a party held at humanity’s end, it is basically On the Beach set at Burning Man. However, what is really remarkable about it is its method of release, as the first straight to VHS film in 20 years.

In the early 2000s it was estimated 90% of British households owned a VCR – the last halcyon days of the format, before it was replaced by DVDs, and then Blu-ray, then streaming. In 2016, the world’s last VCR manufacturer Funai Electric ceased production. To release a film straight to video, in other words, is to make watching your film as difficult as possible.