After winning top honors at last year’s Venice VR competition, directors Michelle and Uri Kranot haven’t exactly rested on their laurels. The filmmaking duo behind “The Hangman at Home VR” has further expanded the project into three new iterations, while simultaneously developing a separate animated feature.
In June alone, the Kranots will launch three new standalone versions of their award-winning project, which is adapted from a Carl Sandburg poem, at three different events.
A short film version, co-produced by Denmark, France, and Canada, recently claimed the Golden Dragon at the Krakow Film Festival, while the project will take two different forms at the NewImages and Tribeca festivals.
Presented under the new title “We Are at Home,” the project will take shape as a multi-user experience at NewImages and as an installation at Tribeca, while in November, the filmmakers hope to relaunch the piece with a live performance component in their hometown of Viborg, Denmark. The single user, Venice prize-winning version will also play at Annecy.
“[For NewImages and Tribeca,] we gave the project a different title because it’s not an extension of the VR,” Michelle Kranot tells PvNew. “It’s in many ways a standalone piece that exists as a performance and as an installation. While the VR is a component, it’s a very different experience.”
“We were curious to see how we could make all of these simultaneously,” she adds. “We want audiences to see the film, and the VR single user piece, and to experience the performance installation, and then see how that feels. Thematically, we were interested in questions of responsibility and accountability; we wanted to see how the different mediums reflected those concerns.”
While juggling responsibilities at Viborg’s Animation Workshop, where they also run the ANIDOX program for animated docs, the Kranots have also been developing their feature debut, an adaptation of Tom Gauld’s graphic novel “Goliath & Me.”
“We felt it was time to make a film that our kids would enjoy,” says Michelle Kranot. “We want to make a very funny retelling of the David and Goliath myth from Goliath’s point of view. The idea is to talk about radicalization; how a boy transforms from a radicalized child to a thoughtful young man.”
Backed by France’s Floreal Films and Germany’s Fabian&Fred, the project – still in early stages of development – will be pitched at the Mifa market later this month.
“We’re hoping to find a way to transfer what we’ve learned from one process onto the other,” Kranot explains.
“There are many things we’d like to continue exploring and implementing… We’re still developing the universe, and are looking for partners in that.”
“We really want to make a difference,” she adds. “[So] we want to get a feel for the market and what’s out there.”
