Passed "by chance" in front of the NewImages Festival, this student already wants to see the fifteen-minute documentary that was presented to her with a 360-degree helmet.

This is what the Forum des images in Paris offers, among others, until June 12, with the 5th edition of this "international festival around digital creation and virtual worlds".

Virtual reality (VR) is present at most major film festivals, from Sundance to Cannes to Venice.

But the rapid evolution of this sector remains unknown to the general public.

For years, it has been supposed to reach the greatest number without ever really succeeding, in particular because of the cost of the equipment.

Michele Ziegler, festival manager, is aware that democratizing this technology takes time.

“VR is very widespread in professional sectors such as audiovisual, automotive and architecture. In the public space, it is not yet the same observation”, she admits.

"A step has been taken," she insists, however, to AFP.

"What is new are these immersive experiences where the public can participate in several. By crossing with games and developing new narratives, this is already making VR a little more accessible to everyone".

- "You are History" -

Virtual reality is also popular with artistic creators.

Among them, Morgan Ommer, German-Vietnamese photographer and director, came to present at the festival, "Madame Pirate: Becoming a legend".

The story of "the greatest pirate of all time", told by a grandmother to her granddaughter.

The viewer is carried away by a palette of settings, a series of intense actions and transitions between the imagination of the granddaughter and the real life of the pirate Ching Shih.

"It's an immersive experience of about fifteen minutes, mixing animation and reality; it's as if you were going to the theater but instead of being on the balcony, you participated in the rise of this pirate", he explains.

If virtual reality holds no secrets for Morgan Ommer, it's quite the opposite for Stéphane Foenkinos.

This French screenwriter and director presents his first augmented reality project.

Another technology which, "through the camera of your smartphone or a helmet on your head, superimposes virtual elements on reality", as indicated by Numerama, specialized media on the digital society and technological innovation.

"For ordinary people, including me, I thought it was about putting on a helmet and going to kill dinosaurs," he says.

Five years ago, this screenwriter had adapted a work by Tania de Montaigne, "Black" on the story of Claudette Colvin, a young African-American girl from the 1950s who had not gotten up on a bus, at the age of racial segregation.

"We first created a show on stage with projections by Pierre-Alain Giraud", also a director and screenwriter, he explains.

"It was he who wanted to take the next step with an augmented reality project, already knowing this specific material."

Fiction being his favorite field, Stéphane Foenkinos nevertheless says he is "passionate" about virtual reality and what it has been able to bring to his work.

"When you are sitting on the bus, on the seat of Claudette Colvin physically reconstituted, you are not outside or in history, you are History", he underlines.

"And I think in terms of sensory, auditory, emotional experiences, we're still at the beginning of something, even though we've been talking about virtual reality for several years."

Stephane Foenkinos now hopes that this festival will allow him to attract the attention of French and international investors, to develop his project.

© 2022 AFP