Venice Immersive 2025: XR Experiences To Stoke Your FOMO (A NoPro Guide)

This year, the 82nd Venice International Film Festival will once again play host to Venice Immersive, the premier gathering of XR works on the planet. Curated by Liz Rosenthal and Michel Reilhac with an International Jury headed up by writer and director Eliza McNitt (Spheres, Ancestra), this year sees 30 pieces in competition with another five college pieces being shown out of competition, eleven “Best Of Experiences” showcased out of competition, and 23 VR worlds offered up for exploration also out of comepition.

Again and again, Venice gives the broadest stage to XR creativity, from seasoned creators in the form to Hollywood luminaries trying their hand, all the way to visionaries piecing together wonders in their spare time at home. It’s a joy to see an institution like the La Biennale Di Venezia embrace such pure creativity.

Our FOMO guide for this year mostly focuses on the In Competition selections, in part as our Katrina Lat will be on the ground on Isola del Lazzaretto Vecchio this year, a NoPro first, with a focus on that.

But for those who are exploring, or following along at home, check both the podcast interview with International Jury President Eliza McNitt, which also drops today, for more.

-Noah J. Nelson, who isn’t jealous of Kat at all, why did you ask?

IN COMPETITION

1968Directed by Rose Bond
9 minutes
Country: USA

Sometimes, the best way to understand the moment you’re in is to look to the past and find a moment that resonates the now. That’s what we’re hoping for from 1968 “communal VR theatre that explores the transformative power of protest through allusions to 1968.”

Director Rose Bond and producer Melanie Coombs (Guillermo del Toro’s Pinocchio) bring 360° hand-drawn animation together with Massimiliano Borghesi’s spatialization of composer inti figgis-vizueta’s original recorded tracks of Seven Sides of Fire “under a geodesic sound dome built with exquisite spatial precision by the Venice-based Studio PASE.”

For those who don’t know, 1968 was a pivotal year of political uprisings around the world, with protest movements and unrest sweeping the globe. Decades later, the impact of singular moments from that year are still being felt in acute ways.

Alien PerspectiveDirected by Jung Ah Suh
15 minutes
Country: USA, Italy

Celebrating the centennial of special effects visionary Carlo Rambaldi whose work includes E.T., Alien, Dune, and King Kong, “Alien Perspective transforms one of his lesser-known creations into a portal. Through the painting ‘Città Spaziale 2,’ participants step into a fully immersive 3D world inspired by Atmosfere Spaziali, a previously unexplored art collection of metaphysical environments and cosmic architecture.”

While the Academy Award-winning Rambaldi is well known to SFX fans, Alien Perspective aims to dive deeper into his work, and is produced by his granddaughter Cristina Rambaldi, with the piece framed as “a cross-generational dialogue, where art becomes a portal, memory transforms into landscape, and creation extends as an open invitation.”

AsteroidDirected by Doug Liman
30 Minutes
Country: USA, Canada

Every Venice Immersive has to have some star power, and this one is looking to blow the fuses on the whole of the Lazzaretto Vecchio.

The Bourne Identity director Doug Liman is bringing the thriller Asteroid, which “follows a group of strangers who take the risk of a lifetime to travel to a nearby asteroid for the opportunity to mine for wealth beyond their wildest dreams,” according to our friends at Deadline.

To pull of this cosmic heist (of sorts) he’s assembled a cast including “Sinners star Hailee Steinfeld, Rhenzy Feliz (The Penguin), Ron Perlman (Hellboy), Leon Mandel (The Americans), Freida Pinto (Slumdog Millionaire) and DK Metcalf, the star wide receiver of American football team The Pittsburgh Steelers.” We are going to have to assume that Metcalf has some solid acting chops, because you don’t drop someone already famous into that talent pool if that can’t swim.

The XR thriller is produced by Liman’s 30 Ninjas in association with Google’s 100 Zeros. Advanced math reveals this to be 30 googol ninjas worth of immersion, which I’m not sure this particular multiversal brane can sustain.

We’re going to need a full report, Kat.

Black Cats & Chequered FlagsDirected by Elisabetta Rotolo and Siobhan McDonnell
20 minutes
Country: Italy

Formula One is having a huge surge in popularity worldwide, and Alberto Ascari is one of the legends of the sport who still holds records more than half a century after his too-early, tragic passing.

Black Cats & Chequered Flags “begins with a quiet, haunting moment: a Spatial Memory Fragment that places the viewer inside the fabled Formula 1 driver Alberto Ascari’s world. Ghost-like memories, echoes of his father, legendary driver Antonio Ascari, flashes of childhood, and the origins of a legacy marked by superstition and fate.”

Integrating multiplayer mixed reality, VR, and “360° film segments shot on location in Turin, at the Ferrari Museum in Maranello, and on the Monza racetrack, where Ascari’s story came to its end.”

BlurDirected by Craig Quintero, Phoebe Greenberg
50 minutes
Country: Canada, Taipei, Greece

Shrouded in mystery, this hybrid live-action and VR piece centers on the topic of cloning and invites audiences to interact with performers while wearing headsets. Designed to be performed in theaters for small groups, Montreal’s PHI is planning a multi-city tour for Blur after Venice and hopes to attract more venues after the Venice Immersive debut.

We caught a very quick teaser video at The Next Stage Immersive Summit earlier this month, and it left us eager to have performing arts centers book Blur coast to coast across the U.S. so that every member of the NoPro Review Crew can experience whatever the heck this thing is for themselves. Lucky Kat will be the first of us.

Creation of the WorldsDirected by Kristina Buožytė and Vitalijus Žukas
28 minutes
Country: Lithuania

Guests on the Isola del Lazzaretto Vecchio will be invited to explore the art and music of Lithuania’s most renowned artist, Mikalojus Konstantinas Čiurlioni in this experience “co-directed and produced by avant garde filmmaker Kristina Buožytė (The Collectress, Vanishing Waves) and Vitalijus Žukas.”

“Drawing from more than 60 of his paintings — including but not limited to the iconic “Creation of the World” cycle — the piece reimagines mythic creation through a contemporary immersive lens.”

We’re always game for a new lens on artistic works that might get modern audiences interested in discovering an artist they might otherwise never find.

Face JumpingDirected by Samantha Gorman, Danny Cannizzaro
25 Minutes
Country: USA

So “looking forward to” is a bit of a misnomer here, at least for myself. Call it more “looking forward to making Katrina check out.” I had the joy of experiencing Face Jumping, the latest from Tender Claws, at SXSW this year when it was on the show floor (in an earlier form?) and found it to be the most pure distillation of the studio’s sense of humor and stream of consciousness storytelling yet.

The title refers to the power the user has to jump from character to character in the piece, seeing the world through a new set of eyes and thus opening up entirely new worlds as well as perspectives. It’s poignant, and silly, and beautiful. As realized in the hardware at SXSW it’s also all done just through eye tracking, so the user’s gaze alone drives the action, a truly wonderful merging of interaction design and narrative metaphor.

When Tender Claws is at the top of their craft, no one is better. Have fun, Kat. (You have fun too, dear reader.)

The Great OratorDirected by Daniel Ernst
40 minutes
Country: Netherlands

This one had us at “nonlinear story world,” and then carries on with the premise:

Once a famous TV Preacher, The Great Orator died at the height of her fame. Now, her consciousness lives on as an AI, allowing her influence to grow ceaselessly. Her followers can join her again in a shared consciousness, feeding her presence and creating a spiritual singularity. Always changing, shaped by the shared memories of her followers, and therefore unsure of who she truly is.

Promising to never be the same experience twice, this one is an interesting use case of available technologies to create emergent, ephemeral character-based stories that are still rooted in an idea that has some anchoring in reality. I’m reminded of the arc of comic book writer Grant Morrison’s The Invisibles, where the head of John the Baptist is thought to be an engine of prophecy that can foretell the future, but in reality, it just speaks glossolalia, aka in tongues. Or to put it another way: it says whatever it is that you want to hear.

Anyhoo, what’s Chat-GPT5 up to these days?

La Magie Opéra
Directed By: Jonathan Astruc
25 Minutes
Country: France, Taiwan

Cast as extras at Palais Garnier opera house in Paris, this embodied VR piece draws audiences into the story of a young opera singer named Céleste who is about to run away from the stage, and her dreams.

Drawn into her story, the user follows Céleste through the hidden corridors and majestic halls of the Opéra Garnier. As the building comes alive around her, she is transported into iconic scenes from legendary operas — each one echoing a part of her inner journey.

I’ll admit it: the video did me in on this one. One look at the opera house and it was a “let’s go.”

Reflections of Little Red DotDirected by Chloé Lee
40 minutes
Country: Germany, USA

This one, an extended reality (XR) open documentary installation which won the 2025 SXSW Jury Award, whose “title echoing an insulting term one Indonesian politician” used to describe the city of Singapore that “Singaporeans have since embraced the term proudly to signify their resilience and prosperity,” drew us in thanks to the subject matter.

I had the privilege to visit Singapore a couple of years back for all too short of a time and was utterly fascinated with the place and all of its layers. The more I can learn about the city-state — its founding, its multiculturalism, and ongoing development — the better.

While I was there and ever since I got back I can’t help but feel like there are lessons to be learned for the future of humanity as a whole in how Singapore is navigating the challenges of today, and how it has navigated the decades since its founding.

Not having the time to catch this at SXSW is one of my great FOMO regrets of my short Austin run.

Out Of Competition

Ancestors
Directed By: Steye Hallema
70 Minutes
Country: The Netherlands

Here’s the thing: when I was at SXSW this year and only had about six hours on the ground, which included moderating a panel with Venice Immersive’s Liz Rosenthal, and I read this description:

Ancestors is an interactive and immersive group experience that will make the viewers profoundly connect with the fellow players and with future generations: taking a selfie, they become the great great grandparent of a human 200 years in the future. What kind of world will we leave for future generations? Ancestors is a thrilling, collective journey six generations into the future. Guided by viewer’s own smartphone, this interactive experience uses AI to create connections between the players in the room. Together, they will explore the challenges of tomorrow, discovering how collaboration is key to shaping a better world.

I saw the word “AI” and the 70-minute run time and said, “not for me.”

Then some friends did it and loved it. And I think Liz did it and loved it (maybe?) because here it is. Kat: take this as your sign.

Ghost Town
Director: Fireproof Games
300 Minutes
Country: United Kingdom

What I’m going to do next is a bit out of line.

If you on Isola del Lazzaretto Vecchio and you own the gear to experience Ghost Town at home: skip this.

Because you should BUY this. I should BUY this. In fact, I’m GOING to BUY this. In fact, it is my post-episode 500 of the podcast reward to myself because I will finally have time to go get lost in it.

The makers of the incredible The Room have followed up that all-timer with another single-player puzzle adventure VR game and spent four years making it.

So major apologies to Fireproof Games for all of us here at NoPro being too damn busy to go play this. But now we have the time and we are going to slowly dine on this paranormal thriller set on a remote Scottish island because apparently, you made us a present specifically for us. Let’s sell some copies, people.

Submerged
Directed by: Edward Berger (for Apple)
17 Minutes
Country: USA, Belgium, Czech Republic, Malta

We did a Full Review of Edward Berger’s release for the Apple Vision Pro, so no need to reiterate here, just go read it, but I will say that if you don’t have an AVP at home and you are at Venice Immersive it’s a good way to spend 17 minutes.

Discover the latest immersive events, festivals, workshops, and more at our new site EVERYTHING IMMERSIVE, home of NoPro’s show listings.

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