Venice Immersive 2025: A Community, An Island, And The Year's Must-See XR
The head programmers of Venice Immersive, Liz Rosenthal and Michel Reilhac, see their mission as more than curating the year's best VR, MR, and hybrid experiences. They want to foster a global creative community, one that returns each year to share work, swap ideas, and test the limits of immersion. 'It's a celebration not just of the works,' Reilhac said, 'but of a community in the making and an art form in the making.'
Three Lions for XR
Venice awards three Lions in XR: the Grand Prize, Special Jury Prize, and Achievement Prize, judged by an international jury with the same ceremony, red carpet, and press attention as the feature film awards. 'These details may sound trivial,' Reilhac said, 'but they're symbolically charged. They signal we're treating this as a full art form.'
That parity extends to the rules: competition titles must be world premieres, with some exceptions for international premieres. This year's competition includes 30 projects, from intimate single-viewer works to multiplayer mixed-reality performances.
Defining Immersive
The curators revisit the definition of 'immersive' each year. 'For us, it is defined by some kind of technology-driven interface that allows for some kind of interactivity—or none,' Reilhac said. But they also program pieces that sit outside headsets, using phones, projections, or other digital interfaces.
https://vimeo.com/1058894936
"Ancestors," featured in the Best of Experiences section, is a 70-minute AI-driven performance by The Smartphone Orchestra, known for its technology-centered productions. At SXSW, about sixty of us used a dedicated app that began by asking for a selfie. The app then showed each participant a photo of a young woman — our imagined future daughter — whose face was a blend of our image and that of a stranger in the audience. The goal was to find this 'future spouse,' identified by carrying the same image on their phone. Couples were paired with others the same way. By the finale, it was revealed that everyone in the room was connected as part of an expansive, multi-generational family. Rosenthal, who also experienced 'Ancestors' at SXSW described the work as 'deeply profound.'
In Competition
Tender Claws' Face Jumping, uses eye-tracking on the Meta Quest Pro to let participants swap perspectives with what looked like ghosts, by locking gazes with them. You literally are seeing the world from another perspective. The ghosts are interactive, but they are not live performers featured in co-director Samantha Gorman's previous VR theater productions The Under Presents and The Tempest.
Black Cats & Chequered Flags puts four players in a mixed-reality pit stop, reliving the career of Italy's only two-time Formula 1 champion, Alberto Ascari. Story sequences explore his family, superstitions, and untimely fate.
Blur blends live performance with VR to create a liminal space between life and death, fact and fiction. Ten audience members share the journey, encountering both wonder and dread in this surreal theatre piece.
Creation of the Worlds takes audiences inside more than 60 paintings by Lithuanian artist M.K. Čiurlionis, evolving them into living worlds. Viewers shift from observer to creator, guided by a contemporary reimagining of the artist's music.
Mulan 2125 reimagines the Chinese legend. In a post-apocalyptic future, Earth is tainted by an alien substance that Mulan must repel to save her people.
The Clouds Are Two Thousand Meters Up adapts Wu Ming-yi's novel into a roaming VR journey of grief, myth, and ecological mystery. With no controllers—just walking and looking—you follow prompts into new chapters, from forest to dreamscape.
The Great Orator is an open-world, AI-driven narrative about a preacher whose identity blurs with that of her followers. Visitors decide what's real, shaping her memories in a world that shifts with real-world events.
Asteroid, directed by Doug Liman, is a 180° short film about a desperate asteroid-mining mission. After the screening, the story continues through a phone call from an AI-driven character left behind.
8PM and the Cat is a generative meditation on grief, following an artist who lost his partner in Seoul's Itaewon crowd crush. Every run is unique, with images and monologues created in real time.
A Long Goodbye invites you into the life of a pianist living with dementia, piecing together memories through objects in her apartment. As her world fills in like a painting, so does her sense of self.
Mirage pairs VR with hand tracking and a haptic vest in a desert-set allegory for depression and anxiety. The audience's challenge is to help the young protagonist, though accepting help proves difficult for her.
The Exploding Girl VR is a visceral portrait of anger, with the protagonist erupting—sometimes seven times a day—as an expression of the world's fraying edges. Directors Caroline Poggi and Jonathan Vinel turn fury into poetry.
Sense of Nowhere is a dreamlike navigation from 'no-where' to 'now-here,' inspired by Taoism, Buddhism, and Jung's active imagination. The player's task is to reassemble fragmented thoughts into a return to the present.
Best of Experience Section
Ghost Town, from Fireproof Games, is a cinematic VR puzzle-adventure set in a deserted settlement. Its seamless production design makes it equally rewarding for gamers and newcomers.
Wall Town Wonders turns your home's walls into a playground, using mixed reality to build and populate an entire town. It's whimsical, but with substantial story and character arcs.
One True Path is a narrative-rich VR game from the creators of A Fisherman's Tale. Players navigate a branching journey that rewards exploration and experimentation.
The Midnight Walk takes players on a fantastical stroll through shifting dream environments, combining VR's scale with a narrative spine.
The Worlds of VRChat
Venice's 'Best of Worlds' remains a unique platform showcase. Guided tours take audiences through elaborate VRChat environments, from surreal dreamscapes to intricate social hubs. 'The community there is so well established and technically adept,' Rosenthal said, 'we find things we'd never imagine.'
The Island Experience
Venice Immersive's physical setting is integral to its appeal. 'The fact that you have to take a boat produces a networking effect,' Reilhac said. Industry, artists, and press spend days together in the island's garden, attending Q&As, panels, and market pitches. This year the market includes 14 projects seeking financing and 10 from the Biennale College Immersive program.
The Festival designed the visit to mimic cinema's rituals: bookings instead of queues, trained docents, and an emphasis on presentation. 'We wanted to start a real exhibition culture for these experiences,' Rosenthal said, 'which didn't exist back in 2017.'
XR in the Context of Cinema
Venice positions XR not as the future of cinema, but as a parallel art form that draws from its own spatial language. 'Immersive stems from cinema, inherits from it, but is its own art form,' Reilhac said. Rosenthal sees a trend toward cinematic forms as XR creators master their tools: 'World-building, cinema, and emotional engagement with characters are becoming central.'
That convergence is evident in this year's picks, where big-budget hybrids like Asteroid sit alongside intimate pieces like A Long Goodbye and experimental theatre like Blur.
A Gathering Like No Other
Venice Immersive offers something rare: a place where the entire spectrum of XR from commercial games, to fine art, and narrative XR all under one curatorial vision. For creators, it is a proving ground with the symbolic weight of the Golden Lion. For this very select and lucky audience, Venice Immersive is both a survey of the state of the art and a living lab for what immersive storytelling can become.
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Los Angeles Times
5 hours ago
- Los Angeles Times
L.A.'s rebel architects, now elders, revisit norm-busting Venice Beach art scene
On a wide, empty stretch of Venice Beach in 1980, seven Los Angeles architects — Frank Gehry, Thom Mayne, Eric Owen Moss, Coy Howard, Craig Hodgetts, Robert Mangurian and Frederick Fisher — gathered for a group portrait by photographer Ave Pildas. Clad in mismatched outfits and standing casually in the sand, they looked more like a rumpled rock band than the future of American architecture. The resulting image, published in Interiors magazine, distilled a seismic moment in L.A.'s creative history. Those seven, gazing in their own directions yet joined in a sense of mischievous rebellion and cocky exuberance, represented a new generation that was bringing a brash, loose creativity to their work and starting to distance itself from the buttoned-up codes and expectations of the architecture establishment. Each would go on to have a successful career, from Pritzker Architecture Prize winners to directors of architecture schools. And they and their compatriots would, for a while at least, help put a rapidly changing L.A. at the center of the built culture. 'That one photograph contains a whole world,' notes filmmaker Russell Brown, who recently directed a 12-part documentary series about that Venice architecture scene. 'There was risk going on, and freedom; it was all about ideas.' 'It's become a kind of reference point,' adds architectural journalist Frances Anderton, host of the series. 'It just keeps reappearing whenever there's a conversation about that period.' The 1980 image is the jumping-off point for 'Rebel Architects: From Venice to the World Stage,' produced by Brown's nonprofit, Friends of Residential Treasures: Los Angeles. Four of the architects — now in their 70s and 80s — gathered for a (far less brash) new photo and an honest conversation about their early careers in L.A., and what's transpired since for the series, which began streaming monthly on FORT: LA's website July 1. A native Angeleno with a background in feature and documentary filmmaking, Brown conceived of the concept after a chat with architect Robert Thibodeau, co-founder of Venice-based DU Architects. After a deeper dive into the image with Anderton, the idea for a reunion was born. 'We thought, why don't we restage the photo and then use that as an excuse to get the guys together?' Brown explains. He preferred a spontaneous, lighthearted group discussion to the typical documentary, with its one-on-one interviews and heavy production. 'It's about the chemistry between creative peers,' says Brown. 'The real legacy of these architects isn't just in the buildings. It's in the conversations they started — and are still having.' He added: 'There's a spark that happens when they're together ... They talk about failure, competition, teaching, aging. It's a very human exchange.' Episode 1, titled 'Capturing a Moment in L.A. Architecture,' opens with four of the surviving architects — Fisher, Mayne, Moss and Hodgetts — recreating that seminal photograph for Pildas and sitting down for an interview. (Howard was interviewed separately, Gehry declined and Mangurian died in 2023.) The group dissects the photo's cinematic, informal composition, in which Pildas aims down from a berm, the neglected buildings behind the eclectic crew shrinking into the horizon, merging with the sand. And they remember a time in which the city's messy urban forms and perceived cultural inferiority provided endless creative fuel, and liberation. Pildas recalls how the original shoot came together at the request of British design editor Beverly Russell, who was looking to capture 'Frank Gehry and some of his Turks.' (The international design press was gaga for L.A. at the time. Anderton notes that her move from the U.K. resulted from a similar assignment, on the 'subversive architects of the West Coast,' for the publication Architectural Review in 1987.) At the time, most of the architects were working in garages and warehouses, forming their studios and collaborating with equally norm-busting and (relatively) unheralded artists in the scrappy, dangerous, forgotten, yet exploding Venice scene. In a later episode, the architects start listing the art talents they would run into, or befriend, including Larry Bell, James Turrell, Ed Ruscha, Fred Eversley, Robert Irwin, Robert Rauschenberg and Jean-Michel Basquiat, to name a few. Basquiat was then living and working in Hodgetts' building. 'It was a spectacular fusion of all this creative energy,' Hodgetts remembers. 'There was no audience, there were no guardrails, and one did not feel constrained.' He adds, later: 'We all felt like we were marooned on a desert island.' Pildas, who had studied architecture before switching to design and, eventually, photography, was uniquely suited to capture the group. He had shot some of the small, quirky experiments of Mangurian and Mayne, and knew most of the others through social and professional circles. (He even knew Hodgetts from high school back in Cincinnati.) The first attempt at the photo seemed stiff, says Pildas, so he took out a joint, which all except Hodgetts accepted, he says. The icebreaker worked. In a later image, says Pildas, Fisher is hugging Gehry's leg, the others huddled around. 'It got pretty friendly in the end,' he jokes. Pildas argues that the photo is much more layered with meaning (not to mention nostalgia) now than it was at the time. 'Back then, it was just another magazine shoot. Now, it's history,' he says. Adds Moss: 'Its relevancy, or not, is confirmed by the following years. Otherwise it's gone.' Each episode explores the image's layers, and the unfolding stories that followed — the challenges of maintaining originality; crucial role of journalists in promoting their work; maddening disconnect between L.A.'s talent and its clients, along with the mercurial, ever-evolving identity of Los Angeles. The tone, like the photo, is unpretentious and playful, heavy on character and story, not theory. This was not always an easy task with a group that can get esoteric quite quickly, adds Anderton. 'I was trying to keep it light,' she laughs. 'I don't think I even have the ability to talk in the language of the academy.' 'They're cracking jokes, interrupting each other, reminiscing about teaching gigs and design arguments,' says Brown. 'There's real affection, but also a sense of rivalry that never fully went away.' Hodgetts doesn't see it that way, however. 'It was really about the joy of creating things. We wanted to jam a bit, perform together; that's really life-affirming,' he says. There are some revealing moments. Mayne, whose firm Morphosis is known for bold, city-altering buildings such as Caltrans HQ in downtown L.A., reflects on teaching as a way of 'being the father I never had.' (His father left his family when he was a young boy.) He tenderly discusses the seminal role that his wife Blythe — a co-owner of Morphosis — has played in his career. Fisher reveals that Gehry was the chief reason he dropped everything to come out to L.A. (At the time, he was working as a display designer at a department store in Cincinnati.) 'I remember seeing this architect jumping up and down on cardboard furniture. I could see there was something going on here. Something percolating,' he says. Moss opens up about his struggles to negotiate the demands of the practical world, while Hodgetts performs brilliant critiques of the others' work, sometimes to broad smiles, others to cringes. Notably absent from the reunion is Gehry himself, who is now 96. 'He's at a point in his life where trudging through sand for a photo wasn't going to happen,' says Brown. 'But his presence is everywhere. He's still the elephant in the room.' One episode explores how Gehry, about a decade older than the others, both profoundly influenced and often overshadowed the group — a reality that was perhaps reinforced by his nonchalant dominance in the photo itself. 'Frank takes up a lot of oxygen,' Mayne quips. Still, all admire Gehry's unwillingness to compromise creatively, despite often heavy criticism. Another prevailing theme is the bittersweet loss of that early sense of freedom, and the Venice of the 1970s, with its breathtakingly low rents and abandoned charm. Today's architects — wherever they are — face higher stakes, infinitely higher costs and tighter regulations. 'The Venice we grew up with is completely gone,' says Fisher. 'But maybe it's just moved,' noted Moss. Distinguishing L.A. as a place whose energy and attention is constantly shifting, he wonders if creative ferment might now be happening in faraway places like Tehachapi — 'wherever land is cheap and ambition is high,' he says. While Pildas was capturing the seven architects 45 years ago, he was also busy chronicling the city's street culture — jazz clubs, boulevard eccentrics, decaying movie palaces and bohemian artists. All were featured in the 2023 documentary 'Ave's America' (streaming on Prime Video) directed by his former student, Patrick Taulère, exploring his six decades of humbly perceptive, deeply human work. After reviewing the recreation of the photo — the architects are still smiling this time, but their scrappy overconfidence feels eons away — Pildas wonders who the next generation will be, and how they will rise. 'Maybe it'll happen that they'll have another picture someday with a bunch of new architects, right?' he says. 'This is a fertile ground for architecture anyway, and always has been.' Exposing that 'fertile ground' to Angelenos of all kinds is FORT: LA's overarching goal. Founded in 2020, it offers architecture trails, fellowships and a surprising variety of programming, from design competitions to architecture-themed wine tastings. All, says Brown, is delivered, like 'Rebel Architects,' with a sense of accessible joy and exploration — an especially useful gift in a turbulent, insecure time for the city. 'Suddenly, you kind of think about the city in a different way and feel it in a different way,' says Brown. 'This is a place that allows this kind of vision to come to life.'
Yahoo
12 hours ago
- Yahoo
TIFF pulls documentary about Oct. 7 attack from lineup over security and rights concerns
The Toronto International Film Festival has pulled from its lineup a documentary detailing one family's experiences of the Oct. 7, 2023 attack by Hamas over footage rights and security issues, though the festival says it is still trying to work through those concerns with the filmmakers. In an emailed statement, the filmmaking team behind the documentary The Road Between Us: The Ultimate Rescue, acknowledged the cancellation and told CBC News that they were "shocked and saddened" by the festival's decision. "Ultimately, film is an art form that stimulates debate from every perspective that can both entertain us and make us uncomfortable. A film festival lays out the feast and the audience decides what they will or won't see," the statement said. "We are not political filmmakers, nor are we activists; we are storytellers. We remain defiant, we will release the film, and we invite audiences, broadcasters, and streamers to make up their own mind, once they have seen it." In a statement Wednesday evening, TIFF CEO Cameron Bailey said he remained committed to working with the filmmakers to "meet TIFF's screening requirements" which would allow the movie to be aired at the festival this fall. The film, by Canadian director Barry Avrich, tells the story of Noam Tibon, a retired IDF general who is on a quest to save his son and his family during the attack that sparked the nearly two year long war between Israel and Hamas. Tibon's story has been told before in the media, including on CBS's 60 Minutes. His son, Amir Tibon, who is a journalist, also recounted the events from his own perspective in a book. WATCH | He moved his family to a border kibbutz — then Oct. 7 happened: According to Deadline, which was first to report the news, TIFF withdrew its invitation for the film to participate in the festival in part because some requirements for inclusion were not met, including the "legal clearance of all footage." "The purpose of the requested conditions was to protect TIFF from legal implications and to allow TIFF to manage and mitigate anticipated and known risks around the screening of a film about highly sensitive subject matter, including potential threat of significant disruption," the festival said in a statement to The Associated Press and Deadline. The ultimate dis-invitation, according to Deadline, came over the legal clearance and identification of footage of the attack that was filmed by Hamas. TIFF's Bailey also rejected claims of censorship, saying they were "unequivocally false," but apologized for any pain the removal of The Road Between Us caused. "Given the sensitive and significant nature of the film's subject, I believe that it tells an important story and contributes to the rich tapestry of perspectives in our lineup — stories that resonate both here at home and around the world," Bailey said in the statement. "The events of October 7, 2023 and the ongoing suffering in Gaza weigh heavily on us, underscoring the urgent need for compassion amid rising antisemitism and Islamophobia." Groups condemn decision The move has drawn condemnation from a number of organizations and officials. Creative Community for Peace, an entertainment industry organization that educates about antisemitism, called the decision to pull the film "deeply disturbing." "They are choosing to censor a Jewish story of survival and attempting to erase the experiences of survivors of the worst attack on Jews since the Holocaust," the statement read in part. "This decision is part of a growing trend of silencing Jewish and Israeli voices under the excuse of 'security concerns.' " The Centre for Israel and Jewish Affairs' CEO, Noah Shack, also decried the decision, which he saw as the festival bending to the prospect of protests. "This shameful decision sends an unmistakable message: Toronto's Jewish community, which has long played an integral role at TIFF, is no longer safe or welcome," he said in a statement. Israel's Minister of Foreign Affairs, Gideon Sa'ar, also called the decision "vicious and sickening" in a post on X. And Stan Cho, Ontario's Minister of Tourism, Culture and Gaming, said in a statement posted to social media that he believed freedom of expression is "integral to the arts." TIFF pulled another documentary last year The festival also drew controversy last year over its decision to run — then pull — a documentary that followed Russian soldiers fighting in the war against Ukraine. The film, called Russians At War by Russian-Canadian director Anastasia Trofimova, attracted protesters who called the film Russian propaganda. After the festival paused screenings due to "significant threats," the film was quietly screened toward the end of the festival. Russians At War follows soldiers and medics on the front lines of the war, something the filmmaker says she did without the government's permission, which puts her at risk of criminal prosecution. Sean Farnel, a producer on the documentary who managed the film's distribution at festivals, told CBC News that the dis-invitation of The Road Between Us felt like "total deja vu," given what his team went through last year. He says decisions like these are becoming "endemic" within the arts world, and that it's increasingly difficult for documentary filmmakers to secure funding to tell difficult or provocative stories. "I think we all have to come together and figure out a way to present such work constructively, safely, because that's what festivals, that's what filmmakers do" Farnel said. LISTEN | 'Russians at War' director talks critics and backlash: His team recently made Russians At War available directly to audiences through a website that he says gives the film context. He says he feels fortunate that filmmakers at least have the option of circumventing the usual distribution channels in this way to give people a chance to view their work in the event that festivals are unwilling or unable to present it. Farnel says that before forming an opinion, people should see films being "censored or self censored" like Russians At War or The Road Between Us. "Watch the film, have an open mind, challenge your own biases and perceptions, and communicate with each other."
Forbes
14 hours ago
- Forbes
Yadhira Carrillo's TV Return In ‘Los Hilos Del Pasado,' Premieres On Univision
Another remake of a beloved telenovela is making its way to Univision. Los Hilos del Pasado, a new adaptation of the hit 1990s Televisa telenovela El Privilegio de Amar, will make its debut on Univision primetime before airing in Mexico. Filming is still underway primarily in Mexico, with additional international scenes in Miami, Milan, and Lake Como, Italy, and U.S. audiences will get the first look when the melodrama premieres September 10 at 9 p.m. ET / 8 p.m. CT on Univision. It will stream on ViX the next day. Headlining the production is Yadhira Carrillo (Amarte es mi pecado, Barrera de amor), who returns to television after a 17-year hiatus. The actress takes the lead as Carolina, a fashion designer whose life unravels when she unknowingly encounters the daughter she was forced to abandon two decades earlier. That daughter is Cristina, portrayed by Bárbara López (Desenfrenadas, Señorita 89). The ensemble cast includes Eduardo Santamarina (La desalmada, Buscando a Frida), David Zepeda (Mi fortuna es amarte, Pienso en Tí), and Emmanuel Palomares (La herencia, Vivir de amor). In this version, Carolina is married to Manuel, a successful music producer. She vehemently opposes a romance between Cristina and Carolina's stepson, Carlos (Palomares). What Carolina doesn't realize is that Cristina is her long-lost daughter, leading her to confront the past to heal her family. Producer José Alberto "El Güero" Castro is banking on the enduring appeal of this storyline, which traces its roots to Delia Fiallo's 1985 Venezuelan telenovela Cristal. Televisa produced two Mexican remakes before Los Hilos del Pasado: El Privilegio de Amar in 1998, starring Helena Rojo and Adela Noriega, and Triunfo del Amor in 2010, featuring Victoria Ruffo and Maite Perroni. ViX streamed other successful remakes earlier this year, including El Extraño Retorno De Diana Salazar and Con Esa Misma Mirada, which also marked the return of former telenovela star and Mexico's former first lady Angélica Rivera to the small screen. The U.S.-first rollout of Los Hilos del Pasado — airing on Univision's broadcast network with next-day ViX streaming — reflects TelevisaUnivision's bet on both traditional TV viewers and the growing streaming audience.
