Dark Rooms
VR experience
Brilliant and unnerving and finally rather moving – The Guardian
Dark Rooms is a sensory, site-specific VR experience and an animated documentary based on real stories. Moving together in groups of up to three, visitors enter intimate narratives of sexuality, identity, trauma and transformation, narrated by the people who lived them. Their experiences unfold through dreamlike environments with a touch of a dark fairytale: emotionally explicit, but never graphically explicit.
Its three protagonists co-created their stories under the principle “nothing about us, without us”. Anjay breaks free from religious oppression and enters Berlin’s kink scene; Trixie D. finds healing from childhood trauma through the trust of puppy play; yaalioness reclaims power through ritualised, consensual play. The creators bring documentary intimacy into a radically immersive form, allowing visitors to move together through inner worlds shaped by desire, shame and self-acceptance, approached with care and respect.
Through its collective free-roam format, Dark Rooms turns VR into a space of shared witnessing. Rather than replacing lived experience, the immersive environment creates a way of approaching another person’s memories, emotions and perspective while leaving the authorship of those experiences with the people themselves.
Dark Rooms premiered in the Venice Immersive section of the 82nd Venice International Film Festival in 2025. It was subsequently selected for SXSW and CPH:DOX, where it received a Special Mention in the Inter:Active competition. At NewImages Festival 2026 in Paris, it won the XR Competition Grand Prize and shared the Impact Award.
Its presentation at Patchlab Digital Art Festival marks the work’s Polish premiere.
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Idea by
Mads Damsbo, Laurits Flensted-Jensen & Anne Sofie Steen Sverdrup
Immersive Director Mads Damsbo
Documentary Director Laurits Flensted-Jensen
Participants Anjay, Trixie D., F.L. & yaalioness
Casting & Co-Creation Anne Sofie Steen Sverdrup, Gayatri Parameswaran, Anna Eline Friis Rasmussen
Intimacy Coordination Anne Sofie Steen Sverdrup
Art Direction Ville Vidø & Han-Yu Feng
Producers Maximilian Mayrshofer, Kate Lis
Co-Producers Felix Gaedtke, Chin-Hsuan Sung
Production Managers Dai-Yun Nien, Bjarke Due Gunslev, Lilian Hess
Technical Director Yu-Jie Huang
Technical Artists Kevin Hsieh, Wei Huang, Carl Emil Carlsen
Visual Designers Felix Onorato, Eg Lio, Coco Tong, Casper Øbro
VR Developers Gim Chuang, Kuokpan Wong, Kevin Hsieh, Yi Kuo, Benjamin Bække
Animation & CG Viljam Smed, Mads Vadsholt, Mathias Rodrigues Bjerre
Motion Capture Performer Petra Karoliina Kaukua
Make-up Artist Monique Kühn
Music kling klang klong
Sound Designer Mads Michelsen
Main Production Company
Morph ApS
Producer: Maximilian Mayrshofer
Line Producer: Kate Lis
Production Coordinator: Bjarke Due Gunslev
Co-Production Company
NowHere Media GmbH
Co-Producers: Gayatri Parameswaran & Felix Gaedtke
Production Manager: Lilian Hess
Assistant Producer: Mia von Kolpakow
Communications Manager: Agnieszka Kracla
Interns: Simona Lauro, Gokcen Kavuk, Johannes Lotze, Anna Grishina
Co-Production Company
NAXS Studio
Co-Producers: Han-Yu Feng & Chin-Hsuan Sung
Production Manager: Dai-Yun Nien
Associated Production Company
Makropol
Casting by
Bedside Productions – Anne Sofie Steen Sverdrup & Anna Eline Friis Rasmussen
and NowHere Media
In association with
Pressman Film – Associate Producer: Sam Pressman
Shared Shapes Productions – Associate Producer: Linden Renz
Commissioning Editor, Danish Film Institute
Frank Piasecki Poulsen
Supported by
The Danish Film Institute, Medienboard Berlin-Brandenburg & Taiwan Creative Content Agency