Venice Immersive opens with an Android XR wildlife piece on Xreal Aura: Margot Robbie narrates, Gemini Live drives a Darwin conversation, and a Google Play release is planned after the festival.
UploadVR reports that Galápagos: The Last Eden is competing at Venice Immersive this week, running September 2–12, 2026 as part of the 83rd Venice International Film Festival. A project representative told UploadVR the Venice presentation runs on Xreal Aura, Google’s Android XR optical see-through glasses paired with a compute puck. That is a different hardware bet than Empire At Sea, the shared Vision Pro drama also in this year’s XR selection.
Interactive wildlife, not a passive nature reel
UploadVR describes an interactive wildlife experience, not a flat 360 film. Visitors can engage with the environment as the piece covers volcanic formation, surrounding oceans, and wildlife behavior. Capture, per producer Anthony Geffen of Atlantic Studios, used stereoscopic 180-degree systems including Blackmagic’s URSA Cine Immersive (dual 8K sensors), a RED dual-lens underwater rig, and a custom-adapted drone for aerial stereo. Geffen’s creator statement on the La Biennale page cites 16K 3D capture of the islands.
UploadVR credits direction to Lina Zilinskaite and Marcus Moresby, with narration by Margot Robbie. La Biennale lists Geffen as director and Robbie in the main cast, with a festival running time of 25 minutes; UploadVR describes the piece as roughly an hour. Treat the festival clock as the Biennale listing and the longer figure as UploadVR’s reporting of the interactive session, not a resolved conflict.
Gemini Live as Charles Darwin
The standout systems detail is conversational. UploadVR says visitors can talk with an animated Charles Darwin driven by Google’s Gemini Live API. Creators told the outlet responses are grounded in research and production material via a system prompt for personality and speaking style, with OpenXR blendshapes in Unity driving the face. That puts generative dialogue inside a festival XR slot, not as a side demo.
Robbie’s personal hook is on the record: she visited the Galápagos at 18 and has said immersive tech can deepen a viewer’s connection to the islands. Geffen’s Atlantic lineage includes prior immersive wildlife work with Sir David Attenborough through Alchemy Immersive, plus the Magellan Titanic digital twin that fed National Geographic’s Titanic: The Digital Resurrection.
Android XR after Venice
The festival is not the end of the road. A representative told UploadVR the experience will ship on Google Play for Android XR devices, with no date and no confirmed device list beyond the Aura presentation in Venice. Aura itself remains in the pre-GA window XREAL has been building toward for late 2026. If the Play release lands, Galápagos becomes one of the clearer consumer showcases for Android XR documentary work, not only a Biennale installation.
Sources: UploadVR, La Biennale / Venice Immersive listing.