Lightroom immersive market announces nine works

Nine immersive media projects have been selected for the first edition of Lightroom: IFFR’s new industry platform for immersive storytelling, taking place during the IFFR Pro Days (Friday 30 January to Wednesday 4 February). Lightroom brings together all XR, VR and interactive projects previously presented as works-in-progress and works-in-development in CineMart and Darkroom, creating one unified market space for immersive work.  

Designed in close collaboration with the festival’s Art Directions programme and hosted at Katoenhuis, Lightroom strengthens IFFR’s long-running commitment to innovative audiovisual formats by offering a clearer pathway for development, visibility and exchange.

Ellen Kuo, formerly of NewImages Festival and manager and VR Gallery curator at the National Taiwan Museum of Fine Arts, joins IFFR Pro as special consultant for Lightroom, working closely with IFFR’s Eva Langerak, who oversees both Art Directions and Lightroom.

The nine Lightroom projects presented form a bridge between IFFR Pro and Art Directions and bring the range and forms of projects presented in the market in line with the Art Directions programme, incorporating mediums ranging from single-channel installation to XR, VR and multiplayer mixed reality.

Lightroom x Reality Check

Reality Check is IFFR’s platform for discussing current issues across the industry, and this edition hosts the first Lightroom symposium, bringing together artists, XR producers, technologists, researchers, funders, curators, policymakers and distributors to explore the future of immersive storytelling under the heading: ‘Building future pathways for immersive storytelling: development, production and circulation’. 

The symposium will take place on Saturday 31 January.

Lightroom 2026 selection in full

In-development:

• Chemin des Bâtards, dir. Leon Rogissart
  Produced by: BNA-BBOT (Belgium), UpscaleXR (Netherlands)
• Les Gens de la Pluie, dir. Nicolas Blies & Stéphane Hueber-Blies (aka Bliesbro)
  Produced by: a_BAHN (Luxembourg), Dark Euphoria (France)
• Hiatus, dir. Laurent Novac, z1 Studio
  Produced by: Tell me the Story (Switzerland)
• Lueurs Intérieures, dir. Bianca Shonee Arroyo-Kreimes & Philippe Lambert
  Produced by: SCINTILLA (Canada)
• Mine Land, dir. & prod. Katja Verheul (Netherlands) 

Works-in-progress:

• Cléo, dir. Coco Chen
  Produced by: Digital Art Foundation, National Taichung Theater (Taiwan)
• The Demise of the ISS Leonardo, dir. Davide Maria Emanuel Cocchiara
  Produced by: Abduct Media (Germany), UPscaleXR (Netherlands)
• Jarkov, dir. Maya Watanabe
  Produced by: Fondazione in Between Art Film (Italy), co-produced by the Mori Art Museum (Japan); produced with additional financial support from the Mondrian Fund (Netherlands).
• NOX, dir. Rio Nakada
  Produced by: Katsutoshi Machiba & Yayoi Nakada (Japan)

About the projects

French filmmaker and digital artist duo Bliesbro (Nicolas Blies and Stéphane Hueber-Blies) continue their exploration of fragility and intimacy that began with Ceci Est Mon Coeur (Venice Immersive 2024, Cannes Immersive 2025) with their latest project Les Gens de la Pluie, a multi-user room-scale experience where spoken word, music, and digital landscapes intertwine. 

In Mine Land, Rotterdam-based filmmaker and artistic archeologist Katja Verheul (Red Dust, IFFR RTM 2024; Improvised Objects, IFFR 2021) proposes a visceral VR documentary installation exploring mine clearance work in post-conflict Bosnia and Herzegovina.

In the VR experience Lueurs Intérieures by Costa Rican-Canadian digital media artist Bianca Shonee Arroyo-Kreimes and interactive director-composer Philippe Lambert, participants transform into fireflies on a quest that explores memory, environmental care and ancestral wisdom.

Belgian theatre director Leon Rogissar brings the poetic VR journey Chemin des Bâtards, where a nomadic choir wanders endlessly through man-altered landscapes. Swiss creator and artist Laurent Novac presents Hiatus, inviting the audience into an immersive experience of nuclear fission. 

Works-in-progress

Amsterdam-based filmmaker and visual artist Maya Watanabe presents the single-channel video installation Jarkov, where a 20,000-year-old woolly mammoth becomes the focal point for exploring time and matter beyond human grasp.

Taiwanese new media artist Coco Chen explores female identity under the digital gaze with Cléo: a 30-minute Multiplayer Mixed Reality (MR) performance blending live dance with digital immersion. 

Davide Maria Emauel Cocchiara comments on the importance of collaboration in The Demise of the ISS Leonardo, inviting users to act as forensic experts using supernatural means to view the memories of the deceased crew of a German-Italian touristic space station.

Japanese media artist Rio Nakada brings her own true story Nox: an immersive XR narrative in which the audience enters the internal world of a teenage girl struggling with trauma, social anxiety, and dissociation.

Results in 2025

2025 saw the premieres of a number of immersive media projects presented at CineMart and Darkroom in recent years. 

Joren Vandenbroucke’s The Great Escape, presented at CineMart 2024, and Daniel Ernst’s The Great Orator, showcased at Darkroom 2025, both went on to world premiere at Venice Immersive 2025. The World Came Flooding In by Isobel Knowles and Van Sowerwine, also presented at CineMart 2024, world premiered at Melbourne in 2025. 

All three projects return to Rotterdam for the Art Directions programme at IFFR 2026.