This is the first virtual reality project to be selected for the Cannes Film Festival Official Selection.
Academy-Award winners Alejandro González Iñárritu and Emmanuel Lubezki have joined forces once again to create an experimental virtual reality instalation called “Flesh and Sand (virtually present, physically invisible)”. This six-and-a-half minute experience is the first virtual reality project selected for the Cannes Film Festival’s Official Selection in its 70th edition.
The film explores the human conditions of undocumented immigrants trying to cross the U.S.-Mexico border. According to the project’s description: Based on real-life accounts, the superficial lines between subject and spectator are blurred and tied together, allowing individuals to walk in an extensive space and live through a piece of the journeys of these refugees. “Flesh and Sand” uses the latest in virtual reality technology which has never been used to create a luminous narrative space with human characters.
González Iñárritu, who has shown most of his filography in the Cannes festival, returns with the first film he’s made since he won his second consecutive Directing Oscar for The Revenant, setting the stage for the use of VR technology.
Congratulations to our 2010 GIFF tributee for gambling on new technologies and looking for new ways to tell stories in the virtual reality format.