41st Tehran International Short Film Festival | Tehran, Iran | October 2024
I served on both the preliminary and main juries of the Virtual Reality category at the 41st Tehran International Short Film Festival (TISFF), organized this year by the Iranian Youth Cinema Society; I also conducted a session titled “New Technologies, New Formats and New Narratives: Virtual Reality Filmmaking Workshop” within the scope of the festival.
The Tehran International Short Film Festival is one of the most important gatherings in the global short film ecosystem. Accredited by the Academy Awards (Oscars), the festival's grand prize winner gains the right to participate in the Oscar nomination process. The 41st edition marked a historic milestone in this respect: with over 15,000 film submissions, including 13,651 international submissions from 151 countries, the festival broke its own global submission record for the year.
What made this edition particularly special for me was the inclusion of a Virtual Reality category for the first time in the festival's 41-year history, and my involvement in its establishment as both a member of the selection committee and the main jury. Despite being newly established, the category received 84 immersive media (VR/XR/MR/AR) submissions from various countries; we evaluated these submissions over a period of months. The fact that a long-established short film festival recognizes virtual reality as an independent competition category is a significant step towards legitimizing VR cinema within the festival ecosystem.
As part of the festival's expert sessions, we addressed interactive virtual reality filmmaking in a workshop held at Pardis-e Mellat (Mellat Cineplex): the impact of new technologies on production processes, the possibilities of VR as a format, and the space that interactive narrative opens up for filmmakers. I participated in the session via online link; the high level of participation in the hall and the interest in the Q&A session were a concrete demonstration of the curiosity that young filmmakers in Iran have about immersive media.
I would like to thank the festival team for their efforts in establishing this new category, and the jury members with whom I collaborated throughout the evaluation process.
