Running concurrent with the wider festival, NewImages’ mercantile section has become an event unto itself, hosting a global who’s who from the XR scene while helping in no small part to reshape the field. As it stands to welcome nearly 250 participants – roughly half divided between market participants and heavyweight decision makers – this year’s fully in-person event should do little to reverse that trend.
“We’re very international,” says XR market head Ellen Kuo. “With more than half of our participants coming from outside Europe, and with several coming from the U.K., Italy, Denmark, Germany, Switzerland and Poland, I call [our network] Paris beyond Paris.”
Driving this year’s robust turnout are the XR Development Market for projects at earlier phases and the XR Art Fair for those winding down a festival run and looking for distribution – though, as it accounts for 70% of NewImages’ market activity, the development expo is clearly the bigger draw.
“Coming here is the point of entry for non-European content producers,” Kuo explains. “Works-in-progress come to Paris because France is the number one country in terms of resources. From accomplished producers to tech startups to smart distributors, France has the most developed immersive industry.”
This year’s development market spotlights 45 projects selected by Kuo and her team, with the preponderance of titles coming from France, Taiwan and Canada reflecting the three countries where XR investment most flourishes. As to other trends revealed by the various projects, NewImages organizers find a number of shared themes.
“XR has always been used to tell stories that are not visible in mainstream content,” says project manager Manon Blot. “For example, we saw a number that dealt with incarceration, including two that followed the experiences of incarcerated women with children, and that’s not a topic you see very often.”
Alongside projects that explore elements of the LGTBQ+ experience, Blot and Kuo also note a rise in personal documentaries exploring personal histories, citing titles like Michael Kolchesky’s childbirth doc “Breathe” and Sam Butin’s family saga “Normandie” as two illustrative examples.
While Kolchesky’s mixed-reality doc incorporates 360 footage from her own medical experience with CGI recreations and spatial sound, Butin’s first-person pic blends interactive gameplay with documentary flair to explore his ancestors’ tense journey as they fled Nazi Europe.
“We’re not just seeing 360 movies anymore,” says Blot. “Instead these creators make people feel part of the experience.”
More than 100 projects will take part in this year’s XR Art Fair, which connects finished titles with international distributors that in large part share a certain trait in common. “I think half the companies on the distribution side are French,” says Kuo.
“We have the big three, but we also have smaller ones coming to market to scale up. That’s what we do: Non-Europeans content comes here to [make connections] and we give French professionals an international door. So it goes both ways.”
