Blanca Li © Lalo Cortes / Michel van der Aa © Lars van den Brink / Céline Tricart © DR / Mary Matheson © DR / Hsin-Chien Huang © DR
Dedicated to honoring the year’s most innovative storytelling, the jury will present the Best Immersive Work award on May 21st at the Plage des Palmes.
THE IMMERSIVE COMPETITION JURY
BLANCA LI - PRÉSIDENTE DU JURY
France, SpainArtistic director
Franco-Spanish choreographer, dancer, actress, and filmmaker, Blanca Li is a major figure on the contemporary arts scene, known for her bold and innovative approach. She moved to New York at the age of 17 to study with Martha Graham, where she discovered hip-hop before returning to Europe, where she founded her contemporary dance company in 1992. Her creations tour worldwide. She choreographs and stages ballets, operas, and musicals, collaborates with leading figures in fashion, film, and music, and has directed three feature films. In 2019, she was elected to the Academy of Fine Arts. She directed Teatros del Canal in Madrid, then chaired La Villette until December 2025. She created Le Bal de Paris, which won the Best VR Experience Lion at the Venice Film Festival (2021), and L’Ombre at IRCAM, a mixed-reality performance selected in competition at the Venice Film Festival (2025). She is currently developing an ambitious virtual cultural platform project.
© Lalo Cortes
CÉLINE TRICART
FranceDirector
Céline Tricart is an internationally acclaimed director and producer, expert in new technologies such as VR and AR. Her work has been featured at festivals such as Sundance, Venice, Tribeca, SXSW, and HotDocs. She earned a Lion at the Venice Film Festival (2019) and the Storyscapes Award at Tribeca (2019) for the VR experience The Key. She also co-directed and produced Maria Bello’s Sun Ladies, a VR documentary about female Yazidis fighting ISIS (Sundance 2018). Celine’s achievements extend beyond film; she led the International VR Jury at Venice (2020) and was knighted by France in 2021. Céline is a martial artist, self-defense instructor, gamer, and published author. She co-founded COVEN, a Paris-based video game studio focusing on emotional narratives and innovative gameplay. Her first game, Masters of Light, was released in 2024 for Meta Quest and PlayStation VR2 and was nominated for “XR Game of Year”, won “Best European VR Game”.
© DR
MICHEL VAN DER AA
NetherlandsComposer, director
As a child, Michel van der Aa (1970) used to build labyrinths out of cardboard, complete with intriguing soundscapes. Today, he lets audiences enter alternative worlds in a different way: through his inventive musical, cinematic and digital creations. As a composer, director, and multimedia artist, he brings together various disciplines and leads the classical opera genre into new dimensions. Van der Aa has received international acclaim; his work has been performed in over 45 countries and he has won many awards, including the Grawemeyer Award (2013), Johannes Vermeer Prize (2015) and the International Opera Award (2022) for his production Upload. His VR opera From Dust was awarded Best Immersive Work at the Cannes International Film Festival in 2025.
© DR
MARY MATHESON
United KingdomDirector, producer
Head of Production Mary Matheson is a multi-award-winning immersive director and producer known for using XR storytelling to drive social impact. With a background in journalism and over two decades of experience in documentary filmmaking, she has created work for clients including NASA, Google, the United Nations, and Save the Children. Her films have been broadcast on major networks and featured at global events such as the UN Climate Change Summit, SXSW, and Sheffield DocFest. Mary’s interactive VR experience on the Yazidis in northern Iraq earned the 2022 VR Award and 2023 Telly Award for Social Impact. Her documentary Walk to Westerbork was part of the award-winning series The Journey Back. She is passionate about mentoring the next generation of immersive creators and helped found the Narrative & Emerging Media program at Arizona State University’s Los Angeles campus. At Agog, Mary leads production with a focus on impact, innovation, and untold narratives.
© DR
HSIN-CHIEN HUANG
TaïwanDirector
Hsin-Chien Huang is a globally acclaimed new media artist exploring the convergence of art, technology, and immersive storytelling. His works have been exhibited in over 50 countries and recognized with major international honor, including Best VR Experience at the Venice Film Festival, Best VR Story at Cannes XR, the Masque d’Or at NewImages Festival, an Honorary Mention at Ars Electronica, and Creator of the Year at the XR Must Awards. In 2025, he founded NarriFlux, a studio centered on immersive narration, new media art, and cultural preservation—conceived as a living archive that resists cultural entropy. Within this framework, Ekholux unfolds as a VR experience bringing together digital art, interactive system, and networked cultural communities. Rather than treating culture as an object of preservation, it constructs conditions where cultural experience is continuously enacted and sustained through participation—proposing an alternative model of cultural persistence in the age of AI.
© DR
