a production house crossing borders
Lesbian Simulator
News
Studio Biarritz projects on Voices of VR podcast
During the showcase at IDFA both Iris van der Meule (Lesbian Simulator) and Luna Maurer & Roel Wouters (Deep Soup) were interviewed by Kent Bye for Voices of VR. You can listen via links below.
Deep Soup listen here
Lesbian Simulator listen here
Two special events for Lesbian Simulator in December
Lesbian Simulator can be found in two special events in December. Catch it during the Dutch Game Week between 3 – 4 December on Breda or at our Paarse Vrijdag impact event in collaboration with ROC Amsterdam between 11-12 December in Amsterdam.
Lacuna at Oorzaken Festival
Lacuna will be available to see at this year’s Oorzaken Festival on 13 December in Amsterdam. You can find more info and tickets here.
Deep Soup and Corine featured on Business Doc Europe
Corine spoke to Business Doc Europe about Deep Soup during the project’s time at IDFA. Read the full interview here.
Corine wins CFAP award for producers
Our founder and producer Corine Meijers has won the prestigious industry award for producers CFAP Prize 2025. You can read more here.
More news on our Instagram
Lacuna
Sonja has no memory of the crucial moment in her early childhood that saved her life: the separation from her parents in 1943. The discovery of three silver rings that once belonged to Sonja’s parents triggers the director to begin prompting her about the past. In the emotional journey that follows, you accompany Sonja through skewed memories, elusive images and reimaginations towards one moment of loss and grief during the Second World War. A true story that leads you from Paramaribo to Amsterdam and into a psychiatric facility called Het Apeldoornsche Bosch. Combining conversations with Sonja, mesmerizing 3D modelling, animation and personal footage, Lacuna explores who we are in relation to who we were. Meanwhile you will find truth in imagination, beauty in the unknown and an act of unconditional love.
Directed by Maartje Wegdam & Nienke Huitenga.
A Podium Biarritz production, in co-production with Copper Views Film Productions and Studio Biarritz.
World Premiere at IFFR 2025, 30/01-9/02
In competition at Cannes Immersive 2025, 13/05-24/05
Nominated for a Gouden Kalf at NFF 2025 for Best Digital Cultural Production
Deep Soup
We live in a world where digital technology and AI increasingly trap us in our heads. Through screens, our minds are constantly stimulated while our bodies, and the physical world around us, fade into the background. These digital systems promise frictionless perfection, in sharp contrast to our messy, tangible reality.
DEEP SOUP is a participatory short sci-fi film that challenges this imbalance. By turning the tables on technology and AI, it invites viewers and participants to reconnect with the material world. Rewiring perception, it offers a new way of seeing – not people, but matter, movement, and gravity.
In the film post-humanists Luna Maurer and Roel Wouters are developing a physical intelligence model: DEEP SOUP. One that learns from matter, not from data. With humans from all over the planet they have gathered recordings of matter to feed their model.
The soup thickens.
Directed by Luna Maurer & Roel Wouters.
A project initiated by Robin Coops.
Lesbian Simulator
‘Lesbian Simulator’ is an interactive virtual reality artwork and video game which will prompt users to experience the world from the perspective of a lesbian. While this artistic ode to love and sexual preference doesn’t shy away from tackling serious issues as well, such as the discrimination and abuse that lesbians still face today, you can expect an uplifting experience full of joy, humour and a touch of glitter!
Inspired by the personal experiences of Iris van der Meule and those close to her, ‘Lesbian Simulator’ aims to create awareness in a playful manner. Users experience some of the key aspects in the existence of a queer person such as: coming-out to various people, making new friends, going on a date but also the first time feeling discriminated or even verbally abused. ’Lesbian Simulator’ mirrors the blind spots within our society in relation to the acceptance of lesbians (and indirectly, of queer people in general). It is an ode to love and sexuality, about the exploration of your sexual orientation and about being embraced by the lesbian and queer community. It is a celebration of diversity and inclusivity.
By Iris van der Meule
Amasonic
Amasonic is a 30 min XR experience where the user can experience different human and non-human perspectives on the Amazon River gathered by local communities and scientists, while exploring the installation users compose a sonification, translating their interaction and co-existence to the Amazon River.
A Studio Biarritz and Polymorf production
Created by Maria Cecilia Oliveira & Marcel van Brakel
The Imaginary Friend
Become an Imaginary Friend! A grieving child struggles to separate reality from fantasy. He creates YOU–his (imaginary) friend–to fight the monsters in his mind. Although you have fun together, he starts to grow disconnected from his surroundings… Are you helping, or just making things worse?
The Imaginary Friend invites you to take part in the vivid imagination of Daniel, a grieving eight-year-old struggling with the line between reality and fantasy.
Become Daniel’s imaginary friend and let him share his world with you. Discover his joys and anxieties, even help him fight his demons head-on. However, as you spend time together, Daniel’s surroundings don’t quite understand. Why is he talking to himself? Is he crazy? When his father intends to fix him, Daniel needs to figure out his feelings before disconnecting from reality completely…
With its unique point of view in storytelling and the latest technical developments in VR, The Imaginary Friend presents an intimate experience unmatched in the VR landscape. Daniel sees, talks and interacts with you, allowing you to form a deeply personal bond with the boy. Through interactive gameplay, you don’t only push the story forward but also actively participate in Daniel’s life.
Written and directed by Steye Hallema.
World Premiere @ la Biennale di Venezia, Venice Immersive 2023
Nominated for a “Gouden Kalf Digitale Cultuur”, Netherlands Film Festival 2023
Please visit theimaginaryfriend.nl for all future events, more behind the scenes, press information and recent updates!
Floating with Spirits
Two little sisters prepare for the Day of the Dead in the mystic mountains of Mexico, remembering the stories their shaman granny used to tell. A portal opens as the Mazatec community celebrates and we enter the interactive universe of their ancestors and the spirits of nature, each keeping a secret world to be unveiled.
Written and directed by Juanita Onzaga,
a production of Cassette for timescapes (BE).
World Premiere @ la Biennale di Venezia, Venice Immersive 2023
Premiere in NL at the IDFA Doclab November 8-19, 2023, in Amsterdam
Special selection at Cannes Immersive 2025
Please visit FloatingWithSpirits.com for all future events, press information and recent updates!
Future Botanica
What is nature, and how do we, as (Western) humans, relate to it?
The fundamental image of nature constantly clashes with the rapid evolution in knowledge, technology, and ideas about it. FUTURE BOTANICA is an Augmented Reality app that enables users, in collaboration with an AI, to design speculative ecosystems with new nature. These virtual ecosystems are then planted into the existing physical nature, allowing exploration of ideas, expectations, fears, and desires regarding future nature. Users experience that any addition or alteration to an ecosystem affects the functioning of the entire ecosystem. With Future Botanica, we aim to challenge our audience to speculate on the transitions ahead. By collecting and sharing stories and ideas from different people and generations, new perspectives emerge, acting as a time capsule for the future.
Future Botanica is a Polymorf and Studio Biarritz production
Designed by Polymorf, Marcel van Brakel and Hazal Erturkan
Ik ben een bastaard (I am a Bastard)
Special Mention Dutch Movies Matter Competion @ Movies that Matter 2022 (April 8-16 ), as well as a beautiful 3rd place – as part of the audience award!
Flemish writer and playwright Rashif El Kaoui calls himself a bastard, a half-blood, a mongrel. The talented playwright has lived in his mother’s native Flanders his whole life. His Moroccan father left the scene a long time ago, and although Rashif bears his father’s surname, he knows little about his roots. At home in Flanders, Rashif has been fighting prejudice his whole life, even within his immediate family. In the road movie I am a Bastard (Ik ben een bastaard), Rashif goes in search of answers to soothe his struggles with his bi-cultural identity. Director Ahmet Polat recognises Rashif’s need to free himself and follows him in his journey to find redemption.
Ik ben een bastaard (I am a Bastard) is a ‘road-movie’ style documentary by photographer Ahmet Polat.
Ik ben een bastaard is a coproduction with Dutch public broadcaster NTR (Het Uur van de Wolf).
It was shown on television last April, @ NTR Het Uur van de Wolf / NPO2.
It’s now available online in The Netherlands @ NPO start.
The documentary is part of a larger crossmedia project Wij zijn bastaard (We are Bastard).
Ik ben een bastaard premiered @ Movies that Matter, in competition Dutch Movies Matter and was selected for the Netherlands Film Festival, in competition Short Documentary 2022.
Symbiosis
Winner best creative technology award – IDFA DocLab competition / Immersive non-fiction 2021.
Symbiosis is a performative, multiuser and multisensory VR installation in which the human body will be redesigned. It allows every participant to embody a post-human or even nonhuman reality: a completely symbiotic human-animal or human-technologic relationship. Dutch experience design collective POLYMORF investigates in a speculative way how a more symbiotic exchange of genetic, cultural and technological traits between people and other present or future living entities can increase or change the agency of all. How will such affect future coexistence, legal rights and relationships between humans and all other living entities on a physical, emotional and spiritual level?
Concept, scenario and art direction: Marcel van Brakel
Directed by: Marcel van Brakel and Mark Meeuwenoord
Symbiosis is designed and produced by Polymorf in collaboration with Studio Biarritz.
HOME
Leaving home is hard when you can’t walk. But staying in a place where you don’t have to walk at all is even harder. A mother obsessively cares for her daughter who is sick and unable to walk. Until she discovers that her daughter is only presenting herself to her as incapacitated and pretending to be sick.
Written and directed by Floortje Pols