Opening on October 31, the 31st GIFF (Geneva International Film Festival) presents an immersive section full of new pieces to discover (and re-discover!) and a market that directly engages with the field’s challenges and potential.
Cover: Future Botanica (Polymorf)
A deep dive into Dutch immersive production, a new collaboration with music at its core, XR pieces that reflect on our connection to the world and explore today’s technological possibilities to offer new ways of engaging with narrative: the 31st edition of GIFF opens on October 31 offering a multifaceted perspective as its greatest strength.
And while the immersive section showcases some of the best works seen at festivals in the field — alongside new titles we can’t wait to discover — the market proposes compelling conferences that reflect on the relationship between different media, often asking how immersive shapes cultural and technological production, not just how it is shaped by it.
We spoke with General and Artistic Director Anaïs Emery to find out what to expect from this new edition.
Discovering the Dutch Immersive Scene at GIFF 2025
ANAÏS EMERY — This year, in our immersive section, we’re spotlighting creativity from the Netherlands, which is a great place for immersive creation. Of course, we’ll also present interesting films and series produced in that country, but Dutch immersive work is truly strong, and our program will showcase major highlights such as ANCESTORS by Steye Hallema, which we’ll present across the ten days of the festival, and FUTURE BOTANICA by Marcel van Brakel and Hazal Ertürkan… an absolutely extraordinary piece. You can explore it on a smartphone or an iPad, adjusting parameters to generate a new kind of vegetal life. It’s a very poetic work that can last 15 minutes or more, depending on how long you choose to stay in the experience. We’ll present it in the caravan XR roadshow, which will be parked in front of the University of Geneva with free admission throughout GIFF.
We also have the beautiful FROM DUST by Michel van der Aa, produced by doubleA Foundation, which won the Best Immersive Work this year at Cannes, and LACUNA by Maartje Wegdam and Nienke Huitenga-Broeren. Within this section we’re also featuring REVIVAL ROADSHOW by Luke Conroy and Anne Fehres, a discovery this year that we’re very fond of, and the new work by Tibor de Jong, KORSTMOS.

The diversity of formats, aesthetics, and themes in these pieces really helps map the branches of Dutch creativity and shows how the country has truly become a key destination for the immersive field.
Highlights from the GIFF 2025 Immersive Lineup
A. E. — We’ve selected some exceptionally strong projects for the international immersive competition this year. We have CECI EST MON CŒUR by Nicolas Blies and Stéphane Hueber-Blies, a Swiss première; LA MAGIE OPÉRA by Jonathan Astruc and Eric Barbedor, a large-scale multiuser piece that takes you by the hand to discover opera in virtual reality; and THE EXPLODING GIRL VR by Caroline Poggi and Jonathan Vinel. All works with very strong artistic direction.
There are also pieces that leverage intriguing devices, such as REFLECTION OF LITTLE RED DOT by Chloé Lee, a documentary that, for me, is truly one of the most beautiful works I’ve seen this year. Also OUT OF NOWHERE by Kris Hofmann, which offers a thoughtful look at the relationship between body and the story. The same goes for EMPATHY CREATURES by Mélodie Mousset. The section closes with the intense LESS THAN 5GR OF SAFFRON by Négar Motevalymeidanshah and CREATION OF THE WORLDS by Kristina Buožytė and Vitalijus Zukas, both Swiss premieres.
Our Hors Compétition POP TV retrospective on Jean-Marc Vallée is shaped by a collaboration with the PHI Centre on the immersive exhibition MIXTAPE by Sylvain Dumais and Phoebe Greenberg, presented in its European premiere. It’s a tribute to filmmaker Jean-Marc Vallée, an immersive, sound-led installation that brings back the cassettes he made for his actors, actresses and collaborators, offering cues, artistic direction, and emotional guides for the characters, the films, and the series he was working on. Since GIFF is a festival dedicated to film and series as well as immersive works, this was too good an opportunity to pass up, because it lets us share audiovisual material from the broader body of work of Jean-Marc Vallée.

We also present LOCUS SOLUS (GIFF × Ensemble Contrechamps): thirty contemporary-music concerts across the entire festival, all brand-new compositions. The audience experiences live music — an actual orchestra — while wearing a VR headset. The pieces are performed live, and a virtual world synchronizes with the music. It’s a full-spectrum performance.
More notable immersive works also appear in Hors Compétition Pulsation. I’m thinking especially of COLOUR TO LIFE by Antonin Ricou and Peter Ha. COLOUR TO LIFE is an XR piece produced by HEAD – Genève (Haute école d’art et de design) within a project on paraplegia. This is very much “VR for good”: it’s designed to entertain and support people with mobility challenges. In this game you do everything with your gaze, advancing the narrative simply by looking.
Then we have SPIRA MEMORIES by Alexine Sierro, from ECAL – Lausanne (École cantonale d’art de Lausanne), a compelling device that engages both virtual reality and the sense of smell. We also feature THE BIG CUBE by Menghui Huang and the world premiere of THE ISLAND OF SHELLS, a hand-drawn animation with a striking style.
New directions for the market: the 2025 conferences and the Immersive Connect Sessions
A. E. — Among the major events this year, we’re hosting a conference on YouTube’s twentieth anniversary titled Youtube Turns 20: How Creators Adapt To Platform Shifts. It will bring together artists and producers who are truly active on the platform to discuss both their economic and artistic models, and how they see formats evolving. It will take place in the Geneva Digital Market (GDM) on Monday, November 3.
Within the talks program, we’re also revisiting the question of works made for mobile smartphones and looking at artistic possibilities and the underlying business models. We’ll explore this in the talk From Studios to Smartphones: Fiction in the Age of User Content, featuring guests behind major works such as Karen Palmer of CONSENSUS GENTIUM, Steye Hallema, creator of the immersive performance ANCESTORS, and the team behind FUTURE BOTANICA.

We’re also devoting an entire session to immersion through sound (Immersive Music: Rethinking the Dialogue Between Image and Sound) and another to adapting immersive works for cinema and television (Adapting XR Works to High-Impact Film and TV Production), which will feature Liz Rosenthal and Eloise Singer.
You’ll be able to watch the conferences remotely starting the following day with a festival badge; a few months later, they’ll be available for free on our website.
In regard to the GDM, this year we’re also launching a new market session called Immersive Connect Sessions, where we’ll present four international works and connect them with major Swiss cultural institutions. It isn’t an outward-facing platform for our own artists; rather, it’s meant to bring outstanding works that aren’t yet well known in Switzerland into conversation with museums, theaters, and other venues.
The festival’s role in a changing immersive field
ANAÏS EMERY — Producing a festival is getting tougher: social tensions in the international contest, shrinking funds, rising costs. And yet festivals, today, matter more than ever… as places where work is promoted, ideas circulate, and different viewpoints are expressed. That responsibility is real. We’ve done a lot to keep our activity afloat and to safeguard it. The show must go on.
One shift in this edition that our audience may appreciate is the partnership with Ensemble Contrechamps, which will allow GIFF to bring music and live concerts into our ecosystem — a meaningful evolution for us. Another shaping choice is to show FUTURE BOTANICA in the caravan XR roadshow, right in front of the university. Decisions like these have concrete impacts on how we produce the festival and how we relate to our audience.
Speaking of the audience, my sense is that more and more people are willing to experiment, today. We’ve changed our immersive offering a lot: we now present many more long-form, high-impact works for small groups. Very spectacular pieces.
Overall, I saw a lot of truly interesting works making the rounds of many events and festivals this year. Output may be lower in number than in the past, yet we also received a lot of submissions. My feeling, however, is that we’re at some kind of crossroads: this is a meaningful period for what comes next. The works we’re seeing now are, in a way, the fruit of past efforts and they are artistically gorgeous. But we still have a lot to figure out around distribution, and the risk right now is losing some public support precisely when it would be the moment to invest more.

We probably need a more international perspective for our sector, too, because every report on immersive production is currently tied to a single country. We don’t yet have a truly international view, an observatory or something similar, so we end up assembling pieces of the puzzle to understand how we’re all doing together. It’s also true that countries that have invested heavily and that have major museums and a very productive cultural scene are better positioned for immersive, because they provide more opportunities.
I love this field deeply. I believe it truly allows us to tell stories differently, and that possibility draws artists in with a broad sense of purpose. The ability to represent and imagine different narratives in so many different ways is, to me, the most beautiful aspect of what we do. One that is also strongly connected to the users, who can have a say within the work. So that’s the beauty, to me: the endless possibility of telling countless stories.
The Geneva International Film Festival will take place in Geneva from October 31 to November 9, while the GDM will open on November 3 and conclude on the 6th. Accreditations can be requested at this link. If you can’t join onsite, the Geneva Digital Market Online accreditation gives you access to online conferences with next-day replays (D+1), project presentations, and the matchmaking platform, including industry contacts and meeting opportunities.
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