VR & Immersive
Explore our VR Programme
Following our passion for storytelling combined with emerging technologies in art, this year’s immersive programme is an exciting collection of award-winning experiences.
The programme will feature six VR & Immersive experiences presented in Greek premiere, produced over the last 18 months competing for the new AegeanFF VR Seahorse Award.
The Jury
Bruno Munoz
With an extensive background in the film industry, including his work as a press attaché at Warner France, Bruno serves as Head of Short Films in the Film Department of the Festival de Cannes. Since 2013, he has played a key role in the selection and programming of short films, shaping one of the world’s most prestigious platforms for emerging talent.
Mathilde Henrot
Programmer and producer, Mathilde is a Selection Committee Member at the Berlin International Film Festival. She curates the Kinoscope programme at the Sarajevo Film Festival and is a co-founder of Festival Scope. From 2021 to 2024, she was the Adjoint Artistic Director of the Locarno Film Festival. Through her production company, Maharaja Films, Mathilde has produced works by Camille Henrot and co-produced films by Anissa Bonnefont, Rabah Ameur-Zaïmeche, and Yorgos Lanthimos. A long-standing advocate for equity and inclusion in the film industry, she has been actively involved with Le Collectif 50/50 since its early days as Le Deuxième Regard.
Arnaud Colinart
VR & Immersive Competition & Spotlight Tickets
Monday 21 - Friday 25 July • 18.00 - 24.00 • Patmion VR Theatre • 4 Seats Available • 40' Duration
If you want to purchase more than one ticket out of 4 available for the same date and time you have to buy them one by one, meaning check out and repeat the process.
The AegeanFF team will help you select your VR experience(s) at the venue. Please arrive 10 minutes before your selected slot.
VR & Immersive Competition
Monday 21 - Friday 25 July • 18.00 - 24.00 • Patmion VR Theatre
The Dollhouse
Premiere • VR, Animation • 23’ • Luxembourg, Canada • 2025
Director: Dominic Desjardins, Charlotte Bruneau
Language: English, French
Subtitles: English
The Dollhouse is an unfolding paper world where 9-year-old Juniper untangles feelings of guilt around how her family treated Magnolia, a woman who came from far away to work as a cleaner in their house. This animated interactive VR tale explores how power dynamics are born within the intimacy of our homes. While reenacting memories with her dolls, Juniper grows ashamed of her actions and finds the courage to disagree with her parents and follow her heart. Will you help her ask for forgiveness?
EARTHS TO COME
Premiere • Experimental Animation • 13’ • USA • 2024
Director: Rose Bond
Language: English
Subtitles: English
Earths to Come is a virtual journey, guided by spatialized sound and immersive animation, into the profound depths of a love poem. Painterly, penciled moving images, interweave with original vocal music conjuring a sense of intimate presence to find vastness and insularity in the simplicity of an 8-line poem by Emily Dickinson.
Impulse: Playing with Reality
Premiere • Experimental Animation • 36’ • UK, France • 2024
Director: Abdalla, May and Murphy, Barry Gene
Language: English, Spanish, French, Mandarin Chinese
Subtitles: English
Exploring the extreme side of ADHD, Impulse: Playing the Reality brings together sharp-witted gameplay and dramatic first-hand accounts of people whose intense emotions lead them to a life on the edge. Leanne turns her world into a game to escape boredom. Omar’s chaotic mind focuses on masterminding risky heists. Errol creates a madcap persona to get respect. And Tara is on the brink of giving up. Their stories are brought home through Mixed Reality. Attempting to follow a train of thought, the stuff in your room sets off a chain reaction leading to all sorts of mayhem. Shadows on your walls become portals into labyrinthine worlds. Words spiral out into alternative meanings and possibilities. Highlighting the inner life of ADHD, Impulse focuses on the thrill of acting without thinking and the power of uncovering your own patterns.
Hungry (八洞妖)
Premiere • Animation, VR, Fantasy • 11’ • Taiwan • 2024
Director: Yu-shu Liu
Language: Taiwanese
Subtitles: English
As the son of a glove puppetry master, Xiao Guo, after his parents’ divorce, could only accompany his father backstage during outdoor performances, often lacking stable meals and motherly care. During an outdoor performance to thank the gods, the puppet beside him suddenly came to life, glowing with a golden light, competing to take on the role of his mother…
Ito Meikyū
Premiere • VR • 20’ • France, Luxembourg • 2024
Director: Boris Labbé
Language: No Dialogue
Subtitles: No Dialogue
Interior and exterior, transparency and opacity, exhibitionism and voyeurism, feminine and masculine; all these notions oppose or unite in the infinite cycle of a labyrinth with no exit. Life here is like a loom whose living weft is woven from a myriad of branching threads and paths.
The Contrast or illusion
Premiere • VR • 6’ • Poland • 2024
Director: Mariusz Borzyszkowski
Language: No Dialogue
Subtitles: No Dialogue
We are exposed to evaluations every day, where the norms by which they are made are usually out of our hands. The story explores what we face in a world dominated by mechanisms of rating, measuring, and judging. Is the evaluation truly systematic, or are the outcomes more random, shaped by factors beyond our control? This VR experience shifts the viewer role, where they are not just an observer, but the one being judged.
Under the spotlight: Presented by ATLAS V
Monday 21 - Friday 25 July • 18.00 - 24.00 • Patmion VR Theatre
Gloomy Eyes
VR, Family, Fiction • 3 x 10’ • France, Argentina, Taiwan • 2019
Director: Fernando Maldonado, Jorge Tereso
Language: Chinese, English, French, German, Japanese, Spanish
When the sun got tired of humans and decided to hide, never to rise again, darkness awoke the dead from their graves. Since then, the clash between man and zombie has set the pace of daily life. Gloomy Eyes is an animated trilogy in 6DoF & 3D real-time. Chase the nostalgic and heartwarming story of a zombie boy, Gloomy, and a human girl, Nena. Their star-crossed love might just be the last seed of hope. The story explores what we face in a world dominated by mechanisms of rating, measuring, and judging. Is the evaluation truly systematic, or are the outcomes more random, shaped by factors beyond our control?
Emperor
VR, Nonfiction • 40’ • France, Germany • 2023
Director: Marion Burger, Ilan J. Cohen
Language: French, English, German
Emperor is an interactive narrative experience that invites us to travel inside the brain of a father suffering from aphasia. Alongside his daughter, we journey into the father’s mental space, imagined as a hand-drawn, monochrome landscape, as she seeks to learn more about his inner self, now obscured by illness.
The Exploding Girl VR
VR • 20’ • France, Greece • 2025
Director: Caroline Poggi, Jonathan Vinel Felici
Language: French
Subtitles: English
For the past three months, Candice has been exploding every day. Sometimes even 2 or 3 times a day. Her record is seven times. She currently has 192 explosions.