Cannes Film Festival Launches Immersive Competition Section

Cannes is entering the multiverse.

For its 77th edition this May, the austere Cannes Film Festival is launching a new competition section devoted to immersive storytelling.

The inaugural edition of the Immersive Competition will feature eight works that use virtual reality, augmented reality and other cutting-edge technologies to “transcend conventional storytelling and transport audiences to other worlds, narratives and eras,” the festival said. The section will be a competition one, with an international jury of experts from the film and immersive art worlds awarding a prize for the Best Immersive Work. In addition, Cannes will screen a curated selection of non-competitive immersive works.

The new competition “aims to spotlight the next generation of international artists who are redefining storytelling and inventing new narrative-driven experiences that move beyond the traditional two-dimensional cinema screen,” Cannes organizers said. The section is being organized with support from French national film board, the CNC. French electronic music pioneer Jean-Michel Jarre will act as official patron for the event.

Of the major film festivals, Venice has been at the forefront of immersive cinema, with its devoted Venice Immersive section since 2017. But Cannes was the first major festival to present a VR film in its official selection, when, in 2017, Alejandro González Iñárritu’s Carne y Arena (Virtually Present, Physically Invisible) screened as part of the official selection.

The immersive works will be presented at an exhibition space in the Cannes Cineum complex on the outskirts of the city and at the campus of Cannes’s Georges Méliès University, a film school that opened in 2021.

The City of Cannes said the section aims to “position Cannes as a global hub for immersive creations and the emerging artistic domain of artificial intelligence (AI).”

The immersive sidebar will run May 15-24. The 2024 Cannes Film Festival runs May 14-25.