MyMetaStories Brings Cinema to Minecraft

French promotional film org Unifrance will debut the first ever feature on Minecraft with this year’s MyMetaStories Film Festival.

Running Oct. 11 – Nov. 3 on more than 30 VOD platforms alongside an Oct. 18 – 21 stint on Minecraft, this digital festival’s second edition will reach out to the online youth on their own terms, showcasing seven features and thirteen shorts from all over Europe – with half the projects coming from female directors.

“This carefully curated, eclectic selection invites viewers to explore contemporary European cinema in all its diversity, both in terms of format and content,” says Unifrance executive director Daniela Elstner. “With a mix of dramas, comedies, and genre films, the programing of MyMetaStories reflects the fresh, sharp gaze of a generation of European filmmakers who play with the codes of world cinema and [who engage with contemporary society.”]

By creating new inroads within online gaming platforms – including a virtual screening room built as a city within Minecraft – the festival looks to blaze a wholly unique distribution trail. MyMetaStories will also be a force on Twitch and Discord, while organizers have partnered with 25 international influencers to help spread the word about continental cinema.

“By combining cinema with video games, our objective is twofold,” says Elstner. “First, we aim to showcase a wide variety of European films to an audience that may not otherwise be exposed to them. Second, we want to test the crossover potential between these two different worlds and stimulate the growth of the overlap between them. In doing so, MyMetaStories bridges generations, cultures, creative modes of expression, platforms, and cultural industries.”

Via the Minecraft platform, participants can watch films in screening rooms tailored to each title, play mini-games and interact with like-minded users from across the globe, all while connecting the worlds of gaming and European filmmaking. Spotlighting 13 animated and live-action shorts available free-of-charge and in three languages, the first-ever Minecraft-held film festival will mark the occasion by screening David Verbeek’s Cannes-selected “R U There” as the inaugural feature presented in this world.  

Together, the seven selected features boast festival laurels from Toronto, Cannes, Berlin, Karlovy Vary, and Locarno, and will offer subtitles in English, French, German, Italian, Portuguese, and Spanish, while the shorts were programed to emphasize accessibility, with many of them dialogue-free.  

Below is this year’s selection. Additional info can be found on the program’s site.

Features

“After the Fire,” Mehdi Fikri  (France, 2022)

“Grand Paris,” Martin Jauvat (France, 2022)

“The Invisible Fight,” Rainer Sarnet (Estonia, Latvia, Greece, Finland, 2023)

“Kiddo,” Zara Dwinger (Netherlands, 2023)

“R U There,” David Verbeek (Netherlands, France, Taiwan, 2010)

“The Lost Children,” Michèle Jacob (Belgium, 2023)

“Sun, Kurdwin Ayub (Austria, 2022)

Animated Shorts

“Boom,” Gabriel Augerai, Romain Augier, Laurie Pereira de Figueiredo, Charles Di Cicco, Yannick Jacquin (France, 2022)

“Criss Cross,” Nina Rybárová, Tomáš Rybár (Slovakia, Czech Republic, 2023)

“Goodbye Jerome,” Chloé Farr, Gabrielle Selnet, Adam Sillard  (France, 2021)

“Herve’s Case,” Luna Filippini (Belgium, 2023)

“Little Fan,” Sveta Yuferova (Germany, 2023)

“Loop,” Pablo Polledri (Spain, Argentina, 2023)

“Miisufy,” Liisi Grünberg (Estonia, 2023)

“Mondo Domino,” Suki (France, 2021)

Live Action Shorts

“The Ballad,” Christofer Nilsson (Sweden, France, 2023)

“Marlon Brando,” Vincent Tilanus  (Netherlands, 2020)

“Piece by Piece,” Reza Rasouli (Austria, 2023)

“Two Girls and a Boat,” Aleksi Delikouras (Finland, 2021)

“The Real Truth about the Fight,” Andrea Slaviček (Croatia, Spain, 2023)