The Ukrainian project FIRST DAY will be presented at the 80th Venice International Film Festival

This year, the Ukrainian project FIRST DAY, directed by Valery Korshunov and produced by Svitlana Korshunova, will be presented for the first time at the 80th Venice International Film Festival

FIRST DAY is a fully immersive first-person VR experience that transports the visitor to the situation of the first day of the unexpected war atack. It allows you to experience the internal transformation that Ukrainians went through on February 24, 2022.

"We want to share the experience of the first day of the war with a wide audience who, like us, once did not believe that such a thing was possible in their lives. This experience is about what allows Ukrainians to resist today, when everyone expected that we would not last even 3 days. FIRST DAY tells about the inner transformation that we personally went through. About what allowed humanity to survive in the most terrible times of history - about helping each other, about one's own choice not to be a victim of circumstances, but to be someone who can help. We are not the first who had to go through this experience and, unfortunately, not the last," says project director Valery Korshunov.

FIRST DAY project became the winner of the 2023 Biennale Cinema College. The project went through several stages of selection and work with VR and film industry experts and mentors, as a result of which it received a grant for implementation and the opportunity to be presented at the 80th Venice International Film Festival in 2023.

The project is based on the stories of real people, in it you can see the houses of Borodyanka and Buchi, which were bombed by the occupiers. Together with a large number of artifacts of the war, they were scanned and further reproduced in virtual space.

Valery Korshunov, known for his projects about Chernobyl, began filming and scanning the consequences of the war in the summer of 2022, for preservation, memorialization and the subsequent opportunity for others to visit these places in person, in virtual reality. Modern technologies already allow it to be done photo-realistically, so immersive projects are one of the most progressive directions of cinema.

FIRST DAY at the Venice Biennale will be represented by a large installation of 36 m2, on a separate island Venice Immersive among 43 other projects from 25 countries.

"We are incredibly grateful to the Biennale Cinema College for the opportunity to implement and present the project about the war in Ukraine at the jubilee Venice International Film Festival. FIRST DAY is just the beginning of a big project that will memorialize our war and tell the stories of our people around the world. But it is very important, it will increase the level of empathy and understand us better, to see the history and destinies of the people behind each destroyed house," says Svitlana Korshunova, the project's producer.

It is known that Korshunov's team is also working on the VR Borodyanka, VR Gostomel and VR Chornobyl projects, each of which will use different storytelling technologies and formats.

The Venice International Film Festival became one of the first film festivals in the world, which in 2017 launched the first competition of works in the field of virtual reality. In 2023, Venice Immersive already has its own island at the Venice Biennale, where 43 projects from 25 countries will be presented from August 30 to September 10, including the Ukrainian project FIRST DAY. Virtual reality today opens a new dimension of cinema, with its challenges and opportunities, which will have an incredible impact on the entire film industry in the coming years.

The presentation of the project in Ukraine will take place during the Venice Film Festival - September 7 at 11:00. At the closed press event, representatives of the press will be given the opportunity to visit the virtual location of the project in VR helmets, to talk with the authors of the project and the founders of Venice Immersive in a live virtual format. Also, witnesses from Kyiv Region will be invited to the presentation of the project, who can share their stories and impressions about the project.