Festival of International Virtual and Augmented Reality Stories coming to Toronto

Canada's first festival of its kind will host it's second annual viewing September 16-18, 2016. The Festival will showcase content producers and storytellers of virtual reality and immersive 360 degree videos. FIVARS will feature the works by groundbreaking international artists dedicated to the innovation of VR. 22 stories will be presented. Highlights include:

• Filmed alongside the Nobel Peace Prize nominated Syrian Civil Defense teams of Aleppo, Chamsy Sarkis’ Nobel’s Nightmare delivers a poignant, never before seen look into a city ravaged by war.

• Sandy Smolan’s The Click Effect follows two renegade marine science researchers as they attempt to free-dive a hundred feet below the ocean’s surface in a single breath to capture the “click” communication of dolphins and sperm whales – the world’s largest predators.

• Starring Bruce Davison (X-Men, Those Who Kill) and Carl Weathers (Rocky, Predator), Randal Kleiser’s Defrost takes place in the not so distant future and depicts the bittersweet reunion of a patient and her family after a decade of cryogenic life extension.

• Nima Dehghani’s (Carnegie Mellon) Decompensation is a culturally relevant, multi-step recreation of the psychological stages experienced by refugees as they grapple with the reality of a new social context. This special installation is presented over five stations.

• A psychedelic meditation on imagination and the unknown, Jonathan Sims’ DREAMTIME employs the cinematic use of “deep dream” to create an uncanny atmosphere of bewilderment.

• Wild Things: The VR Experience takes the viewer to Bali, Indonesia with Dominic Monaghan (Lord of the Rings, Lost) to assist a snake wrangler in capturing a King Cobra, the largest venomous snake in the world.

FIVARS presented by VRTO will be at MSMU Studio, 950 Dupont Street in Toronto. For more information visit fivars.net