VIRTUAL REALITY

Keisuke Itoh
13 min | Japan

Clapping is a way of expressing emotions by using one's own body to create sound. When people want to express their admiration, they channel their emotions into their hands and clap, with energy and feeling, even if it means withstanding physical discomfort. But does that feeling ever reach the other person?

Mike Brett, Steve Jamison, Arnaud Colinart, Pierre Zandrowicz
38 min | France, United Kingdom

At 8.08am on Saturday 13th January 2018 - at the height of President Trump and Kim Jong Un’s threats to use nuclear weapons against one another - the people of Hawaï were going about their usual weekend routines when the unimaginable happened. Mobile phone alerts went off simultaneously across the islands as the entire state population received the following message from the Hawaï Emergency Management Agency (HEMA): BALLISTIC MISSILE THREAT INBOUND TO HAWAII. SEEK IMMEDIATE SHELTER. THIS IS NOT A DRILL.

Pedro Harres
19 min | Germany

Encircling a central square, a new town emerges in all its diversity. A crossroad of stories, buildings, hopes, and conflicts. Social ties and cultures take root. People nurture sympathy and care for their equals, but also animosity towards those who are different.

Edith Jorisch, Miri Chekhanovich
15 min | Quebec, Canada; Israel | National Film Board of Canada, Dpt., Lalibela

Plastisapiens a VR project by Edith Jorisch and Miri Chekhanovich is a virtual reality journey towards a speculative future where organic beings and plastic become one.

Analee Weinberger
16 min | Canada, Israel | National Film Board of Canada, Genetic Media, Moofa Production House

“What makes us who we are?” is the question that drives this whimsical VR experience about an adopted child and an ancestral mystery.

Céline Tricart
40 min | France, USA

Under the cover of a thrilling, fun adventure game with hand tracking enabled, Fight Back is an introduction to self defense techniques as an answer to gender-based violence.

Asif Kapadia
15 min
Canadian Premiere

From the Oscar and BAFTA-winning filmmaker Asif Kapadia, Laika is a new Virtual Reality animation, giving audiences the chance to be immersed in the moving and tragic real life story of the first dog in space.

Nicolas Gebbe
7 min | Germany
Canadian Premiere

When spending a lot of time at home in isolation, the walls begin to move. The sense of time fades, the days pass quietly, everything seems to repeat itself endlessly. Spaces, conversations, visual impressions and sounds merge and make everything seem like a long dream.

Jörg Courtial
13 min | Germany
Canadian Premiere

Genesis embarks on an emotionally intense round-the-clock journey to experience the dramatic milestones in the evolution of earth and mankind from an unknown perspective. Chaos, rebirth and catastrophes mark the history of Earth, yet mankind exists. 4.7 billion years of evolution condensed into a round-the-clock reveal: We are children of galactic luck, born in the final second of eternity.

Thierry Loa
24 min | Quebec, Canada
Canadian Premiere

Today we live in a new epoch known as the Anthropocene, characterized by mass human influence on the planet. Exclusively shot from Earth skies in VR, 21-22 China takes us on an immersive meditative journey across the World’s largest rising superpower to offer a rare inside look revealing the Anthropocenic reality in these parts of the World where rapid urbanization, major industrial development and massive topographical changes are taking place.

David Rapp
28 min | Italy

Montegelato is a montage film in VR, the first of its kind. Hundreds of cinematic sequences define a three-dimensional collage of the Monte Gelato waterfalls (Rome, Italy) as they have been filmed in more than 180 productions including films, TV series and commercials.

Ahnahktsipiitaa
21 min | 2022

Niitsitapi writer and director Ahnahktsipiitaa (Colin Van Loon) takes us beyond the veil of traditional media and transports us directly into another realm, where past, present and future are one; where colonial rules and assumptions are forgotten; and where we can finally get to the truth of the matter.

Abel Kohen
30 min | France, Germany | IKO, Reynard Films, Prefrontal Cortex
Canadian Premiere

Biolum is a cinematic PC-VR experience that thrusts the user into the role of Rachael, an experienced diver exploring the abyss, guided by expedition leader Eva, a renowned marine scientist and mentor. Rachael discovers that luminescent parasites are infecting ocean flora and fauna. She gets infected herself and faces a mesmeric fight for her mind when she discovers the shocking truth behind why Eva sent her down there.

Mengtai Zhang
30 min | United States
Canadian Premiere

Diagnosia portrays the director's memories of being incarcerated in a military-operated Internet addiction camp in Beijing in 2007, where internet addiction and other youth issues were treated as a severe mental disorder with sometimes violent means. It also raises questions about the extensive research publications that have come out of this institution, and how they entangle with the scientific literature of “internet addiction” on a global scale.