Virtual Reality at MIFF

Virtual-reality filmmaking has gone from a fad to a vital new mode of storytelling in recent years. This year MIFF continues its recognition of the shift with a dedicated program featuring 16 VR films, including three new Australian works.

The selection tells the stories of an 18-year-old wheelchair user determined to lose her virginity, American tennis champion and civil-rights activist Arthur Ashe, and a group of WWI soldiers in the trenches moments before the declaration of peace.

The Australian entries are particularly compelling. Local filmmakers Molly Reynolds and Rolf de Heer – who have a strong pedigree of films dealing with the impact of colonialism on Aboriginal people, including their 2015 feature Another Country – and Mark Eland will debut their first VR film, The Waiting Room, a sci-fi work depicting humans as an invading alien force. And director Sutu Campbell brings together ancient Dreamtime stories and imagined futures in the colourful animation Future Dreaming. Campbell collaborated with four young Indigenous people from remote WA (Ali Lockyer, Maverick Eaton, Nelson Coppin and Maxie Coppin) to conjure these futures – look out for the space emus.

From Argentina, 4 Feet: Blind Date introduces us to an 18-year-old woman going on a blind date – but she’s yet to tell him about her wheelchair. Canada’s Gymnasia presents a bizarre animated world of Tim Burton-esque puppets roaming the grounds of a haunted, abandoned school, and Children Do Not Play War takes us to Uganda, where we see war through the eyes of a 12-year-old girl named Aloyo.

VR films at MIFF will be presented in two ways – Packages and Standalone Experiences.

More details and session times here.

Tickets on sale now.