Immersive Competition

Long Goodbye tells the story of Ida, a 72-year-old pianist living with dementia. In thisanimated, interactive VR experience, we walk in Ida’s shoes. We experience a day in her life,as her reality is fading. The apartment, where she spent a lifetimewith her beloved husband Daniel, first feels empty and undefined. When we interact with objects and play the tape recordings of her husband, her playful world gradually comes to life,as if drawn in paint before our eyes.

Like pieces of a puzzle, memories and conversations help Ida to rediscover herself. But wealso discover Daniel’s struggles, as he hopes to stay connected and realizes their remainingtime together may be short. A Long Goodbye is a poetic experience about the impact of dementia, but above all it is about love and the long goodbye of two lovers who shared a life together.

Directed by Kate Voet & Victor Maes
Production: Cassette for timescapes, Tarantula, Valk Productions
Country: Belgium, Luxembourg, Netherlands
Year of production: 2025
Length: 25-30 minutes

It is said that one out of every 20 people in Japan is currently being treated for some form of mental illness. The field of psychiatry in Japan has various problems such as historical backgrounds, difficulties in psychiatry itself, and structural distortions of psychiatry, which may hinder the recovery of people suffering from mental illnesses. 

In this work, a boy who lost his beloved cat and began hallucinating about the cat is diagnosed with a mental illness simply because he can see the cat, and is forcibly admitted to a hospital for treatment. What will the boy experience in the hospital? This is a work that only VR can provide a realistic view of the problems of psychiatry, the relationship between mother and child, and what salvation means to the boy.

Directed by Atsushi Wada
Production: Kodansha Ltd.
Country: Japan
Year of production: 2025
Length: 37 minutes

Golnaz, a 23-year-old immigrant Iranian girl, tries to cope with her new life in Germany.
She finds a pack of Saffron that reminds her of home. Golnaz cooks some rice to add saffron, a heartwarming dish from her past. But she didn’t expect that this moment would bring her back into the most traumatic events of her life. Three years ago she survived  a tragic drowning that took away her family while traveling illegally in a boat.

Directed by Négar Motevalymeidanshah
Production: Ten2Ten Films, Atlas V & iNK Stories
Country: France
Year of production: 2025
Length: 7 minutes

After waking up from a nightmare, Gil discovers that he can learn to control his dreams with the help of his boyfriend. Together they journey through strange dreamscapes and discover that the worst dreams are the ones they don't want to wake up from.The spaces of Lúcido originated from an attempt to translate my visual practice into virtual reality. In a static double image, two realities coexist simultaneously. In Lúcido, these images acquire movement and three-dimensionality and mark moments of transition between ordinary dreams and lucid dreams.

Directed by Vier
Production: COLA Animation, Bruno Caetano, Susana António
Country: Portugal
Year of production: 2026
Length: 17– 25 min

Oneiro is an animated movie in virtual reality, which places the viewer directly in the 360-degree environment of the narrative. The film was made in English and it satirically portrays the interaction of artificial intelligence programmes with the average user, from the perspective of the programme, offering insights into how it perceives humans, relationship to the planet, and their relationships between themselves. 

Directed by Miloš Tasić
Production: Grof Industries
Country: Serbia
Year of production: 2024
Length: 8 minutes