Sunset Motel / VR (2026)

Sunset Motel is selected to be in competition at VENICE IMMERSIVE, XR – Extended Reality section, Biennale Cinema 2026, 83rd Venice International Film Festival, Venice, Italy.

Welcome to Sunset Motel. Your room is not ready. Hang around in the lobby or by the pool until your turn comes. Don’t pay attention to our guests; they are only passing by—we all are. They will be leaving shortly…

Presentation

Sunset Motel is a collaboration between choreographer Gilles Jobin and scratchboard master Thomas Ott. In Sunset Motel, Thomas Ott’s elaborate characters are brought to life when set in movement through motion capture by Gilles Jobin.

From the bus stop, where the participant lands in VR, they see the Sunset Motel on the other side of the road. They can roam freely through the lobby, around the pool and into the rooms. They follow the nine characters and witness their stories unfolding through movement and without dialogue. The participant is literally immersed in a black-and-white cosmogony created by Thomas Ott, populated by misfits and loners, “waiting for something”. When a dramatic event unfolds, the participant in VR realizes that they might themselves be the next chapter of that story…

Thomas Ott & Gilles Jobin

Thomas Ott is a Swiss comic artist whose haunting work is immediately recognizable. With his spectacular scratching technique, he creates wordless, dreamlike narratives and his cinematic framing serves as gorgeous backdrops for intense characters who are anguished victims of the greed and absurdity of the human condition. (Instragram)

Gilles Jobin is a Swiss contemporary dance choreographer and an XR director based in Geneva who, since the mid-Nineties, has created dance pieces which have become references on the world stage. Since 2016, he embarked on the exploration of the “new digital territories for dance”, creating hypnotic virtual choreographies. (More information)