The current health emergency related to the spread of Covid-19 has also had a significant negative impact on the cultural sphere. One of the most affected sectors is cinema: indeed, it is no longer possible to make new productions or organize festivals of any kind, but above all, great uncertainty hovers over festivals. Even the behavior of the organizers of the major international exhibitions held in Europe is not straightforward: if the Cannes Film Festival is continually postponed waiting for better times, Roberto Ciccuto, president of the Biennale, assures that the Venice Film Festival-scheduled between September 2 and 12-remains on schedule. In addition to the necessary safety regulations, many questions arise regarding the actual realization of the Festival, especially regarding the virtual part: this year as never before, it will be necessary to consider films in virtual reality and augmented reality in order to realize a Film Festival that is up to the task.

Cinema, one of the most characteristic elements of modernity, has always historically been open to major innovations, just think of the massive production of 3D films. But alternative realities, i.e., augmented reality and virtual reality, have also already been experimented with to some extent in the film industry. Virtual reality films are already here and several festivals have a section dedicated to AR/VR technologies.

The Sundance Film Festival, an independent festival created by Robert Redford and currently in the eye of the storm as a possible incubator of Coronavirus, is held in January in Park City, in the mountains of Utah, involving more than 100,000 attendees each year. The 2016 edition was quite special, both in terms of technological innovation and openness to the mainstream. In fact, Disney presented four years ago at Sundance a new technology under development, The Holo-Cinema. This is a solution created by Lucasfilm, the Star Wars production company recently acquired by the Disney group: through the use of smart glasses, in fact, fans are granted the opportunity to visit various locations in the theater and meet iconic characters without having to move from their homes. This kind of technology could even allow an extension of the saga far beyond the space-time boundaries of the original storyline.

The Holo-Cinema is not the only innovation presented at Sundance in 2016: in fact, The Leviatan Project(https://youtu.be/gcAEpx_SSiM) aimed to transpose Scott Westerfeld's science fiction saga to the screen by combining virtual and augmented reality. Through the use of visors and gloves using motion sensors, The Leviatan Project allows the viewer a totally immersive experience in Westerfeld's literary trilogy. This is a rather expensive project, which required the collaboration of several companies and took a full three years to complete, but it could open up totally unexplored fields for virtual reality films. By realizing the synergy between film and virtual reality and exploiting the full potential of AR and VR ,both sectors could be revitalized by ensuring increasingly interactive transmedia products.