Belfast XR Festival returns to The Black Box this November, presented as part of Belfast Film Festival, with two of the most talked about works in international immersive entertainment. The headline show is Escape the Internet, a massive multiplayer game in which you and over a hundred strangers are trapped on a mysterious island and must work together, using your phones, to escape the A.I. apocalypse.
Created by Lucas Rizzotto and built with Pete Cybriwsky, Escape the Internet is a new gaming genre that shatters the fourth wall and takes audience interaction to the next level. Expect wild interactive set pieces, secrets to uncover about the people sitting next to you and monsters to evade in a deep mystery full of colourful characters. Move fast, because time is of the essence: every audience member is infected with terminal brainrot and can be possessed by an algorithmic demon at any moment. Your future, and the future of the entire internet, is at stake.
The experience adapts to each audience, so no two shows are the same, and it is played together in the room, on a big screen, in a performance venue. You can’t stream it and you can’t play it at home. Bring your fully charged phone, bring your friends, and escape the internet.
Lucas Rizzotto is an award-winning inventor and viral artist whose work includes immersive VR stories, a film made on social media one minute at a time and narrative games designed to be played by crowds of hundreds. His creations have been seen online by hundreds of millions of people, covered by press worldwide and premiered at the world’s biggest film festivals. Escape the Internet has previously played at SXSW and Tribeca and comes to Belfast in partnership with IDFA DocLab.
The show runs for around two hours and is for ages 18 and over. Tickets are £15, with a 10% discount on group bookings of four or more. Book through Belfast Film Festival at belfastfilmfestival.org/event/escape-the-internet.
Belfast XR Festival is Northern Ireland’s festival of immersive and extended reality, and this year’s short run at The Black Box follows Amplify:XR Labs, its UK-wide development programme for XR creators and producers. Escape the Internet is presented by Belfast XR Festival as part of Belfast Film Festival and in partnership with IDFA DocLab.
