South African virtual reality documentary selected for Sundance Film Festival

Cape Town – The South African virtual reality film Azibuye - The Occupation has been selected to screen at the Sundance Film Festival's New Frontier section.

"The 2020 edition of #NewFrontier stares down the fear of losing our neighborhoods, and losing ourselves, and reminds us that the future is now —and because the future is now, the future can be ours.” — @sharifrilot, Chief Curator of #Sundance New Frontier

— SundanceFilmFestival (@sundancefest) December 12, 2019

The annual film festival which takes place in Park City will run from 23 January - 3 February 2020.

This film directed by award-winning filmmaker, Dylan Valley, is a stereo 360 documentary about Masello and Evan, two homeless black artist/activists who take up residence in a crumbling mansion, vacant for 20 years, in an affluent part of Johannesburg.

They proclaim their illegal occupation to be an artistic and political act to address the ongoing racial inequalities in land ownership in South Africa. When it is revealed who the owner of the house is, the pair have a difficult decision to make.

Compiled by Leandra Engelbrecht.