The Man Who Couldn’t Leave is a emotionally-evocative 360 video and powerfully-told story about political prisoners during Taiwan’s White Terror trying to communicate with their families. It took home the top prize at Venice Immersive 2022 for it’s many innovations of storytelling grammar and fully using the spatial medium of VR to find new ways of telling this story and moving the audience. Be sure to catch the behind-the-scenes video in order to fully appreciate the ambitious scope of the production, and the various multi-perspective theatrical staging, lighting, and art direction on top of many abstracted metaphors and poetic interpretations of the story that cultivated a dream-like quality. Funique also did an amazing job with the stereroscopic production & post-production of this project. I had a chance to chat with director Singing Chen through interpreter / distributor of the project Poshan Wu during the Venice Immersive Festival.

The first half of this interview is in English, and the Mandarin Chinese portion starts at 42:52.