The Oldenburg International Film Festival enters the metaverse. The indie film festival, known as “Germany’s Sundance,” is celebrating its 30th anniversary this year with a new collaboration that allows fans to enter a virtual reality version of the event.
The collaboration between Oldenburg, German metaverse platform MILC and film critics site The Film Verdict, announced Thursday, is billed as a way to bring “the magic of Oldenburg” and the international festival scene into the virtual world.
Oldenburg founder and festival director Torsten Neumann also noted that doing “metaverse screenings” – showing festival films to a global audience in the MILC platform’s virtual reality space – could be international festivals’ way of giving fans worldwide access to their premieres and exclusive events.
Currently, International Federation of Film Producers Associations (FIAPF) regulations require international festivals such as Oldenburg to restrict access to their world premiere screenings to local personal audiences or individual territories. But a “metaverse premiere,” argues Neumann, could be a separate event.
“Since the world had to go into digital isolation in 2020, we decided to embrace new and innovative formats for the festival as welcome opportunities,” said Neumann, “and the sheer idea that entering the MILC metaverse as a virtual territory that claiming its own status with regard to digital movie premieres could open new horizons and support, especially for indie films, seems an exciting path to explore.
MILC and The Film Verdict launched the first-ever metaverse-only film festival, the Alpha Film Festival, in March of this year. Their collaboration with Oldenburg, according to Hendrik Hey of MILC and Eric Mika of The Film Verdict, was part of a common goal “to create a new digital platform for independent filmmakers around the world to premiere their work and escape the constraints of traditional digital distribution channels. .”
