2016's Tribeca Film Festival includes VR experiences in gaming and fictional storytelling

From April 13 – 24, the Tribeca Festival Hub will feature a total of 23 virtual reality interactive installations and exhibitions, with 16 of the films making their world premiere. Projects scheduled to debut at this year’s festival include interactive gaming exhibits, content with fictional and documentary storytelling, as well as interactions with artists and filmmakers.

For this year’s festival, the organization will also have a Virtual Arcade open from April 18-20, which will allow about 50 people at a time use various headsets like the Samsung Gear VR. In effort to embrace virtual reality, the festival will also extend onto its fourth annual Storyscapes program, a showcase of 10 VR installations which will be focusing on social issues such as racism, violence, and the environment. Genna Terranova, the festival’s director, told Mashable, “VR is evolving and moving so quickly. We really feel like [VR is] a big part of our exhibition from a storytelling point.”

Outside of the Virtual Arcade and Storyscapes, the festival will host a variety of virtual reality experiences including Killer Deal, a story about a “struggling machete salesman” who finds himself in trouble when his discount motel comes with an uninvited guest.

Deep, a meditative and psychoactive VR game that is controlled by the user’s breathing, is one of the high-profiled installations to check out this year. Other projects set to debut are The Crystal Reef by Cody Karutz, Lauren Knapp and Stanford University, a story about the future’s climate change being told from a rocky reef off the coast of Italy, as well as Hard World For Small Things by Janicza Bravo and Wevr.

If you’re interested, check out this full list of VR experiences at the 2016 Tribeca Film Festival.