'Becky Shaw' review: Alden Ehrenreich steals the show in biting comedy about a blind date gone wrong - Entertainment Weekly

One major value proposition of virtual reality (VR) has always been its potential to foster empathy. A VR headset, or so the thinking goes, can change a viewer’s political point-of-view as it changes her literal one, aligning her with the subject experience of another person and thereby laying the groundwork for a new social paradigm based on mutual understanding. It’s a heady promise, though perhaps limiting in its reliance on the shock-and-awe of firsthand experience. At this year’s Toronto International Film Festival, which now features an immersive storytelling strand, eyebrows were raised by news reports of a virtual-reality Lesbian Simulator. Also at this year’s festival is In the Heart of the South, whose co-writer and director, Nyla Innuksuk, has created VR works exploring the Canadian Indigenous experience, including a piece for the augmented reality-forward Sámi pavilion at the 2022 Venice Biennale. In In the Heart of the South, Yura (Anna Lambe) is an award-winning Inuk artist attempting a similar transition to feature films.