Alejandro Inarritu’s VR Experience ‘Carne y Arena’ Shakes Up Cannes Viewers – If They Can See It

Alejandro G. Inarritu and Emmanuel Lubezki are making a splash in the world of virtual reality with their VR installation “Arena y Carne (Virtually Present, Physically Invisible)” but the Oscar-winning director and cinematographer are also playing hard to get at the Cannes Film Festival.

“Carne y Arena” is not physically dangerous – viewers are free to move around a large open space while the action is unfolding, but only one person at a time undergoes the experience, surrounded by unseen aides who keep cords from being tangled and prevent visitors from walking into walls.

(The floor of the space is sand, the one non-virtual effect.) You are soon surrounded by a group of migrants who are attempting to cross the border, and quickly you’re all under the harsh spotlight of a border patrol helicopter and in the sights of a bevy of gun-toting agents.

The people around you in the virtual desert are not actors playing roles — they’re men and women who really made the dangerous border crossing and are recreating their real experiences, sometimes in the clothes they actually wore when they made the trip.

First Palme d'Or Front-Runner; Ted Sarandos Surfaces; 2017's 'Toni Erdmann'

“By adapting the events experienced by one or many of the immigrants during their journeys across the border and adding specific details described by them, I wrote and staged a scene creating a multi-narrative space that incorporates many of them in what could be called a semi-fictionalized ethnography,” wrote Inarritu.