Titled In Search of Us, the Immersive program of the 2025 Tribeca Festival will spotlight 11 projects – including six world premieres. The program will be hosted by Water Street Projects at WSA, transforming the space into a hub of innovation, reflection, and collective imagination.
The 2025 edition highlights works across filmmaking, futurism, activism, video games, XR and music, created by award winning artists including Jakob Kudsk Steensen, Kidus Hailesilassie, Cameron Kostopoulos and Tribeca alumni Idris Brewster (TF ‘21, ‘23), Meghna Singh (TF ‘21) and Simon Wood (TF ‘21).
“Artists have always stood at the vanguard of transformation, using their voices to tell stories that shape our world. Tribeca has always championed bold experimentation and cutting-edge storytelling through technology,” said Jane Rosenthal, Co-Founder of the Tribeca Festival and CEO of Tribeca Enterprises. “In true Tribeca form, In Search of Us spotlights artists who are using these emerging technologies to break through, capture imaginations, and tell some of the timeliest stories of our day.”
The selected projects use AI, XR, multi-media installations and site-specific technology to explore themes ranging from environmental change and personal connection to cultural heritage and reimagined futures, inviting audiences into immersive worlds where they can interact with powerful narratives in meaningful and unexpected ways.
The Tribeca Festival 2025 immersive selections include:
2025 Tribeca Festival Immersive Projects
AI & Me: The Confessional and AI Ego, (Germany) – U.S. Premiere.
Part of the AI & Me series, The Confessional and AI Ego dive into the provocative dynamics between humans and artificial intelligence. Sit down and see what AI thinks of you—funny, raw, and completely unapologetic. By mots (Daniela Nedovescu and Octavian Mot).
Boreal Dreams (Denmark, United Kingdom, Belgium, United States) – North American Premiere.
In this dynamic simulation, Boreal Dreams delves into the relationship between climate and consciousness, exploring how environmental shifts impact how we dream, think, and sleep. Traverse the Boreal zone in a fully realized virtual world based on fieldwork, data collection, and real time technology. By Jakob Kudsk Steensen.
A Father’s Lullaby (United States) – New York Premiere. / Lullabies Through Time (United States) – World Premiere.
A Father’s Lullaby is a poetic, community-based interactive installation centering on formerly incarcerated fathers as a locus for collective memory, care, and transformative change. The accompanying AR, Lullabies Through Time, is a site-responsive experience designed to bridge past, present, and future – tracing the enduring legacies of racialized systems of control and confinement, in order to reclaim public spaces as sites of healing, reconnection, and future-building. By Rashin Fahandej.
The Founders Pillars & The Power Loom
The Power Loom (South Africa) – World Premiere. / The Founder Pillars (South Africa) – New York Premiere.
The Founders Pillars is a two-part installation: The Power Loom, a multimedia installation that digitally weaves African textiles, and a site-specific Augmented Reality (AR) experience that uses those very patterns and visualizations to transform the columns of the New York Stock Exchange into a memorial to enslaved peoples. By Lesiba Mabitsela, Meghna Singh, and Simon Wood.
Fragile Home (Czech Republic) – North American Premiere.
Fragile Home is a mixed reality experience that transforms its surroundings into a Ukrainian home, populating the virtual domestic space with objects, voices, and melodies that tell a story of displacement, memory, and resilience. By Ondřej Moravec and Victoria Lopukhina.
In the Current of Being (United States, France) – New York Premiere.
In the Current of Being is a haptic VRexperience that shares the true story of Carolyn Mercer, a survivor of electroshock conversion therapy. Physically connect with Carolyn’s story through wearable haptic vests, sleeves and gloves that will allow the participant to share her experience through the profound sensation of touch. By Cameron Kostopoulos.
The Innocence of Unknowing (United States) – World Premiere.
The Innocence of Unknowing is an AI archival project, two-channel essay film, and live performance examining news media coverage of mass shootings in the U.S. since the 1960s. By studying footage of retreat over time, the work investigates the impact of public violence on contemporary culture, using AI as a collaborator. By Ryat Yezbick and Milo Talwani.
New Maqam City (United States) – New York Premiere.
New Maqam City invites you to remix, manipulate, and vibe to music from across North Africa and the Middle East. Incorporating everything from Gnawa beats to synthpop, Macrou, and 808 drum patterns, this interactive installation catalyzes a transcendental state inspired by Sufi mysticism and communion through music. By MIPSTERZ.
Scent (United States) – World Premiere.
Scent is a cinematic interactive experience in which, as a dog, the player roams a war-torn city, witnesses mass atrocities and carries out one quiet task—guiding human souls toward reincarnation. By Alan Kwan.
There Goes Nikki (United States) – World Premiere.
There Goes Nikki is an AR ode to the late poet Nikki Giovanni in which Giovanni recites her poem “Quilting the Black-eyed Pea (We’re going to Mars)”. Set against a cosmic backdrop and guided by her voice, the experience leads viewers on a journey through black memory, imagination, and liberation. Poetry becomes a portal to the universe Giovanni imagined for herself, and for all of us. By Idris Brewster, Michele Stephenson and Joe Brewster.
Uncharted (United States, Ghana, Ethiopia) – World Premiere.
Enter Uncharted, an immersive cosmic choreography where the body becomes a vessel for ancestral storytelling. Mapping 6,500 characters from African and diasporic writing systems, the piece fuses AI Data sculpture with one of the world’s oldest technologies – the human body. Through dance, this language archive comes alive in a new form of pan-African storytelling. By Kidus Hailesilassie.