Banksy project receives Red Sea Fund's first VR investment - Screen International

Saudi Arabia’s Red Sea Fund has backed its archetypal virtual world task – based astir Banksy’s Walled Off Hotel – signalling the country’s increasing ambitions successful VR.

The Walled Off Hotel VR Project received an undisclosed magnitude from the fund, which was established successful 2021 and has a cookware of $14m to backmost much than 100 directors of fiction, documentary and animation.

The task is simply a Germany-Palestine co-production, which has antecedently been selected for Venice’s Gap-Financing Market and received concern from Germany’s FilmFernsehFonds (FFF) Bayern, German Games Fund and Creative Europe.

Directed by Palestinian creator Amer Shomali and German filmmaker Clarens Grollmann, the acquisition allows radical to determination virtually wrong the edifice successful Bethlehem, which overlooks the partition separating Israel and Palestine successful the occupied West Bank. The edifice and adjoining depository was opened successful 2017 by UK thoroughfare creator Banksy.

Saudi does not yet person a notable beingness successful the VR abstraction but is taking its archetypal steps.

The manufacture broadside of this month’s Red Sea International Film Festival successful Jeddah had a VR Zone, showcasing 10 projects that see award-winning titles from Venice’s prestigious VR strand.

Among these were 5 projects from Saudi’s King Abdulaziz Centre for World Culture (Ithra), from the archetypal twelvemonth of Ithra’s Creative Solutions programme, aimed astatine boosting KSA’s originative system by empowering integer contented instauration successful immersive technologies specified arsenic virtual reality, augmented reality, mixed reality, immersive audio, haptics, and more.

The projects included The Anticipation Of Rain, Wamdah, Alqatt XR, Jawaab and History Of Science.

• Saudi Arabia aims to boost section manufacture with $234m Film Sector Financing Programme