From Venice Immersive’s decade of innovation to 2026 Toronto’s new XR hub, immersive storytelling is taking an increasingly central place on the festival stage.
Venice: A Decade Of Innovation
As always, work made with every conceivable XR creative tool can also be found across the various Venice Immersive sections at the Lazzaretto Vecchio. Among the standouts: Nevatars, from immersive and interactive media expert Josh Nelson Youssef and Andy Serkis, the British actor and director famous for his motion-capture performance as Gollum in The Lord of the Rings trilogy. Serkis’s passion for animation has already led him to Animal Farm, an animated film based on George Orwell’s novel of the same name, which made its world premiere at Annecy in 2025 after a 14-year journey to the screen. Now this 31-minute extended-reality installation — experienced through smart glasses and featuring the voices of Daisy Ridley (Star Wars’s Rey) and Kathleen Turner — lets audiences interact and speak directly with the characters, receiving real-time responses.
In this often-surprising section, which celebrates its tenth anniversary this year, also look for Galapagos: The Last Eden, accompanied by Margot Robbie, which — like Nevatars — debuts a new technology at the Lido: the XReal Aura glasses, born from a collaboration between XReal and Google, promising an even more sophisticated immersive experience.
Toronto’s Immersive Market
Toronto is also intergrating immersive storytelling directly in its inaugural TIFF: The Market, which will introduce an Innovation Hub featuring eight XR, VR and mixed-reality projects. Presented by the Canada Media Fund, the selection includes the world premieres of Mekwâc: “Now Is Good”, Tartupaluk and The Big Picture – “Lunch Atop A Skyscraper”.
