Biennale College Cinema – VR Italia: the new call for applications

La Biennale di Venezia announces the 7th edition (2022-2023) of the Biennale College Cinema – Virtual Reality project for the development and production of Virtual Reality projects: opening today 22 March 2022 (through 19 May) on the La Biennale website is the call reserved for teams composed exclusively of a director and a producer, both of whom must be Italian, on their first, second or third VR project, with no age limit (Biennale College Cinema – Virtual Reality/Italia).

The Biennale College Cinema – Virtual Reality / International call will open after the Italian call, during the 79^th Venice International Film Festival (31 August -10 September 2022).

Call for applications

In the meantime, the 6th edition (2021-2022) of Biennale College Cinema – Virtual Reality has come to a close. The project Manus – director Sjoerd van Acker (Holland), producer Firat Sezgin (Turkey) – will be supported by the grant from La Biennale and will be presented at the 79^th Venice International Film Festival in the Venice Immersive section, that will be held in person on the island of Lazzaretto Vecchio (Venice Immersive Island) and will feature in Competition a maximum of 30 immersive projects.

For the 7^th edition (2022-2023) of Biennale College Cinema – Virtual Reality / Italia, a selection will be made of six Virtual Reality projects, lasting a maximum of 30 minutes and to be produced with a budget of € 75,000. They will be invited to participate in a development workshop to be held in English.

Following the workshop, a further selection will be made to pick two projects, which will move on to the next phase along with the ten projects selected from the international call, and will participate in the subsequent workshop to be held in January.

Of these twelve projects, a maximum of three projects will be selected to participate in an additional development workshop scheduled for the month of March 2023.

At the end, a maximum of 1 project will receive a grant from La Biennale to cover the production costs (which must in no case exceed € 75,000). The completed project will be presented at the 79^th Venice International Film Festival 2022.

The Biennale College Cinema – Virtual Reality project enjoys significant funding from the MEDIA Programme – Creative Europe of the European Commission ­­– Directorate General Connect. The educational activities will be supported by the MEDIA contribution. This contribution is in addition to MEDIA Programme’s support for the development of the Venice Production Bridge.

Biennale College Cinema, organized by La Biennale di Venezia, enjoys the support of the Ministry of Culture – Directorate General Cinema. Biennale College – Cinema relies on the academic collaboration of the Gotham Film & Media Institute and the TorinoFilmLab. The Director is Alberto Barbera, Head of Programme is Savina Neirotti.