Festival de Cannes has unveiled Cannes XR Virtual event dedicated to immersive technologies and related works, as part of the Cannes Marché du Film Online from June 22-26, 2020. In its new innovation this year, Cannes will offer new ways to explore Extended Reality partnering with Tribeca Film Festival, Kaleidoscope, Museum of Other Realities and VeeR enabling industry professionals to remotely participate and experience the event.

Cannes XR Virtual will be accessible to industry professionals accredited to the Marché du Film Online. Accreditations are open at a preferential rate of € 95 until May 29 and €195 thereafter.

Cannes XR Virtual is the destination where professionals from the traditional filmmaking industry, XR artists, independent producers, leading tech companies, location-based and online distributors will come together to imagine and shape the future of movies.

“It is a very special edition. After having prepared for a promising edition in Cannes, where for the first time we would have expanded the VR to the Palm Beach, we had to reinvent Cannes XR and find a way to put it online,” said Jérôme Paillard, Executive Director of the Marché du Film. “I’m very impressed to see how fast, with our spectacular team and our wonderful partners, it has been possible to build a totally new concept where we will be able to show worldwide, and with optimal quality, the VR experiences that we were expecting to show in Cannes”.

Cannes XR Virtual will be presented in different formats on several platforms

• Cannes XR Virtual will be open to VR users at the Museum of Other Realities (MOR), a virtual art gallery specialized in featuring immersive work from VR artists around the world. The entire virtual programme will remain available until July 3rd via the MOR application on Steam, Viveport, or Oculus.

• Cannes XR Virtual 2D live video stream shot by a virtual cameraman from the MOR, including conferences, pitching sessions and project presentations, will be accessible on the Marché du Film Online. Cannes XR Virtual 2D live video stream will also be available on the Tribeca Film Festival and Kaleidoscope websites.

• VeeR 360 Cinema, the selection of 360 cinematic experiences at Cannes XR Virtual, will be showcased on the VeeR VR Video Platform

• A network of partner Location Based Entertainment (LBE) in several major cities in the United States, China and France will offer access to Cannes XR Virtual to journalists and guests who do not have a VR headset.

“The MOR is a perfect place to host an ambitious and stylistically challenging event like Cannes XR,” adds Robin Stethem, Co-founder of the Museum of Other Realities. “Creating a virtual venue that can host numerous showcases, VR arcades, 360 cinemas and networking spaces where some of the finest global digital players can meet and interact is what we love to do. The MOR is a place to connect, share, and experience virtual reality art with others, and so we hope everyone who is interested in XR creation will join us for the virtual edition of Cannes XR.”

The Tribeca Film Festival has continued its partnership with the Marché du Film and Cannes XR as it brings its acclaimed immersive programming online. A custom virtual showcase of XR projects curated by Tribeca will make its exclusive debut for a three-day exhibition. The line-up is curated from Tribeca Immersive’s 2020 programming, and includes select World Premieres which were intended to debut earlier this year, prior to the postponement of the 19th annual Tribeca Film Festival.

“We’re thrilled to be able to present selections from the 2020 Tribeca Virtual Arcade at Cannes XR. We are turning towards innovation as a solution in these uncertain times. While we continue to explore the future of physical exhibition, this is an exciting moment to share our immersive curation with an expanded global audience, and Cannes is the perfect partner to help us to accomplish this.” – Loren Hammonds, Senior Programmer, Film & Immersive, Tribeca.

Curated in association with Kaleidoscope, the Cannes XR Development Showcase is an exciting opportunity for virtual and augmented reality titles in-development to be pitched, showcased and benefit from pre-arranged one-to-one meetings with decision makers, industry leaders, co-producers, distributors and curators of the XR entertainment space.

Top decision makers who have confirmed participation in this years Cannes XR Virtual include Todd Shaiman, Head of Immersive Arts at Google, Colum Slevin, Head of Media, ARVR Experiences at Facebook, Ishita Kapur, Director, Mixed Reality Content and Partnerships at Microsoft, Jingshu Chen, Co-Founder at VeeR VR, Jake Sally, Head of Development at RYOT / Verizon, Sarah Vick, Executive Producer at Intel Studios among others.

“This is the second year in a row that we collaborate with Cannes XR, and we are very proud that in 2020 our role within this prestigious event has grown” says René J. Pinnell, CEO and co-founder of Kaleidoscope. “When the COVID-19 crisis struck the market we knew we needed to react and help creators to stand on their feet again. We also offered to step in with our production expertise to make XR online gatherings attractive and socially relevant. I believe that events like Cannes XR are crucial hotspots on the global map of independent immersive creation, and play a major role in building a system of support for digital artists.”

VeeR, a leading VR entertainment platform available worldwide, will curate an innovative program, VeeR 360 Cinema. “It’s our great pleasure to collaborate with Cannes XR this year. During the time when COVID-19 has casted huge shadows on the immersive industry, VeeR managed to help a group of 360 filmmakers monetize their works. We are happy to share VeeR’s production strategy and distribution model to the 360 community”, says Jingshu Chen, Co-founder of VeeR, “Together with Cannes XR, we aim to find more ways to support immersive content creators, to push the limit of 360 content. With the development of 5G network in China, VR is growing faster than ever and there’s great demand for premium VR content in Chinese market. More investors start to show interests in cinematic VR content. Therefore, apart from the Online Showcase, we have also planned a LBE Showcase in China. In doing this, we hope to connect selected projects with potential investors and collaborators.”