A Community, An Island, And The Year’s Must-See XR

VENICE, ITALY – AUGUST 31: General view outside of the Palazzo del Cinema ahead of the start of the 62nd Venice Film Festival on August 31, 2005 in Venice, Italy. (Photo by Pascal Le Segretain/Getty Images)

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When Venice launched its immersive section in 2017, it became the first A-list festival to treat XR on par with feature films. Nine editions later, Venice Immersive remains the only competitive XR program at a major international festival. It now fills the Lazzaretto Vecchio, a former plague quarantine station a three-minute vaporetto ride from the Lido, with 69 works from 27 countries.

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.

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“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.