kindred is selected for the 2022 venice film festival!
We collaborated with content production company, Electric Skies, to animate their project, Kindred, an animated virtual reality (VR) story of family and belonging—and we’re thrilled to announce that it’s been selected for Venice Immersive, the VR line-up for Venezia 79 (2022)!
Look out Venice, the lizards are on their way!
From the initial concept through to the final creation, our saurian team had a fantastic time collaborating with the lovely folks at Electric Skies to bring their project to life—-and we’re now excited to see it feature in the immersive line-up for this year’s Venice Film Festival.
Kindred, written and directed by Bambou Kenneth, produced by StoryTrails creative, Tessa Ratuszynska, and animated by our very own Marcus, Luis, Nicholas and Emma, is based on the remarkable true story of an aspirational parent called Syd, and their ground-breaking journey through the adoption process in the UK, experiencing first-hand highs and lows of a dream shared by so many others. After years of setbacks and rejections, Syd finally gets matched with a child, Ollie, and in the process helps redefine the meaning of family.
The Virtual Reality section of the festival programme will feature some of the best VR and Extended Reality (XR) projects from across the world, and Kindred is listed among 30 projects in competition for the golden lion. Venice was the first A-list festival to launch a competition for VR in 2017, and has since emerged as a leading showcase for XR filmmaking. The official selection will return as an in-person event to the Venice Immersive Island – on the island of Lazzaretto Vecchio - a short distance from the Lido di Venezia, for the first time since 2019. The selection will be open to the press and industry accredited guests on August 31, and will then be open to the public and accredited visitors from September 1 – 10.
On discussing the project, animator and art director, Emma, said:
“Working in VR is a really wonderful expansion on traditional storytelling, as it is so much more immersive - being able to tell stories through the environment around the viewer, rather that just a fixed viewpoint, and making them feel part of the story is a really rewarding approach. The story itself is such a valuable one that I felt strongly about telling and doing justice to, and working to bring that story to life in a visually impactful and different world was really rewarding.”
About the Venice Film Festival:
The 79th Venice International Film Festival is organised by La Biennale di Venezia and directed by Alberto Barbera. It will take place at Venice Lido from 31 August to 10 September 2022. The Festival is officially recognised by the FIAPF (International Federation of Film Producers Association). The aim of the Festival is to raise awareness and promote international cinema in all its forms as art, entertainment and as an industry, in a spirit of freedom and dialogue. The Festival also organises retrospectives and tributes to major figures as a contribution toward a better understanding of the history of cinema.
