A glimpse into the future of storytelling
Four Immersive Highlights from the 2024 Venice International Film Festival
A glimpse into the future of storytelling
This year, the Venice Immersive division of the 81st Venice International Film Festival includes 63 extended-reality projects drawn from 25 different countries. The prestigious annual event’s carefully curated slate once again conveys the pioneering spirit and advancing capabilities of virtual, augmented and mixed reality. Since 2017, the Venice International Film Festival has included an immersive competition, and this year finds 26 of the 63 projects up for awards consideration (including the Venice Immersive Grand Prize, Venice Immersive Special Jury Prize and Venice Immersive Achievement Prize). Two of our highlights below are in this year’s competition, while the other two represent astonishing categoric advancements‚ including one in the festival’s first-ever immersive project for Apple Vision Pro. It’s worth noting that—as Venice has long been a leader in recognizing immersive storytelling—all the creators involved in all the projects warrant continued attention and these are but four of many defining the future of storytelling.
Ceci Est Mon Cœur
An inclusion from the immersive competition roster, “Ceci Est Mon Cœur” is a mesmerizing blend of physical installation (featuring a connected garment enhanced with luminous embroidery that aligns with the unfolding narrative) and visual projection, all of which is set to an enveloping soundtrack. Over the course of 35 minutes, the sensory experience probes our distorted relationship to our bodies through the tale of a child reconciling with his own. The work was produced by a_BAHN and co-produced by Lucid Realities and PHI Studio.
“With ‘Ceci Est Mon Cœur‘ we wanted to create a singular form of collective experience,” directors Stéphane Hueber-Blies and Nicolas Blies share with COOL HUNTING. “What counts is not the interaction between the participants, but the idea of experiencing something together in a shared moment. A moment of contemplation and poetry. A moment in which we can feel empathy for our own body.”
Impulse: Playing With Reality
Also drawn from the in-competition section of Venice Immersive, “Impulse: Playing With Reality” is an installation and mixed-reality journey that shines a light upon the challenges of Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD) through four first-hand accounts. The powerful work—directed by Barry Gene Murphy and May Abdalla of Anagram—depicts the way in which linear thinking spirals into alternate meanings.
“It’s fantastic to be at Venice, a film festival which has witnessed almost 100 years of cinema history, with an experience that uses new technology to bring the subtleties of everyday stories to life—something cinema has been mastering for a century,” Abdalla tells us of “Impulse: Playing With Reality.” Another beautiful touch to the 35-minute piece, Tilda Swinton is the narrator.
What If…? – An Immersive Story
The first-ever interactive Disney+ Original story, “What If…? – An Immersive Story” is a 50-minute, narrative-driven experience from Marvel Studios and ILM Immersive. A first for Venice Immersive, and part of the “Best Of Experiences” category, this epic mixed-reality piece was exclusively released on Apple Vision Pro earlier this year—and has since won an Emmy Awards. Participants familiar with the Marvel Cinematic Universe may be familiar with the “What If…?” concept and the way it portrays variant storylines for beloved characters. Here, however, the participant is the central protagonist and they must make choices and work their way through the tale by way of custom hand gestures and eye-tracking.
“I’m so excited to be included in a group of storytellers here at Venice International Film Festival, thanks to Liz Rosenthal and Michel Reilhac, that is allowing creativity to showcase a new universe in the palm of your hand,” Dave Bushore, director and executive producer of “What If…An Immersive Story,” tells COOL HUNTING. “We hope that ‘What If…? – An Immersive Story’ continues to represent the prism of growing opportunities that experiential media offers creatives, to challenge the way in which we experience stories, characters and empathy. The goal of this project was to blend everything I love about linear cinematic-style storytelling with motivated interactivity. The crossover between watching, or being in a story, is only growing, and allows us to see these worlds through our own lens.”
A Cure for Straightness
Paris-based immersive production company Floréal has multiple moving projects represented in this year’s festival (including the aforementioned “Impulse: Playing With Reality“). “A Cure for Straightness,” produced by their team, along with award-winning immersive studio KOST, and directed by Cameron Kostopoulos, has found a home, however, among the 16 immersive works in the Venice Gap-Financing Market division—which spotlights pieces in the final stages of development and fundraising. We’ve selected this work for its deft, emotional, four-chapter study of the traumas of conversion therapy. This 15-minute work utilizes CGI animation and AI alongside haptic response and eye-tracking to transform real survivor narratives into a confrontation of this cruelty toward LGBTQ+ youth.
“Cameron comes to Venice this time with a collection called A Cure Of Straightness that confronts the reality of conversion therapy. I come from Iran, and I had someone in my immediate family who went through this kind of therapy, and it was devastating,” Katayoun Dibamehr, the immersive film’s producer, tells COOL HUNTING. “When Cameron talked about this project, and I found out that this is still practiced here in US, I was even more troubled. This is a timely subject matter, and a human rights issue that we need to talk about. We are happy to join forces with Cameron and KOST studio. Cameron is putting a light on this problem through immersive technology that will further amplify the voices of LGBTQ youth.”