Project Detail

The Reality of Hope

Synopsis

Virtual reality creator Hiyu is facing kidney failure. His online friend Photographotter travels from New York City to Stockholm to be a live donor to Hiyu, revealing a lifesaving friendship formed in VR.
Official Selection Sundance Film Festival 2025 - World premiere

Details

Year
2025
Type of project
Shorts
Running time
30 min
Format
Digital
Director
Joe Hunting
Producer
Joe Hunting
Co-Producer
Max Willson
Executive Producer
Justin Lacob, Bryn Mooser
Editor
Joe Hunting
Screenwriter
Joe Hunting
Director of Photography
Joe Hunting
Sound
Joe Hunting, Rob Ouellette
Principal cast
Hiyu, Photographotter
Technical Artist
Rob Ouellette
2D Animator
Tia Johnson

Categories

Production Status

Page updates

This page was last updated on 12th May 2025. Please let us know if we need to make any amendments or request edit access by clicking below.

See also

You may also be interested in other relevant projects in the database.

We Met in Virtual Reality We Met in Virtual Reality

Director: Joe Hunting

Year: 2022

Filmed entirely inside the world of VR, this documentary captures the excitement and surprising intimacy of a burgeoning cultural movement, demonstrating the power of online connection in an isolated world. Official Selection Sundance Film Festival 2022 - World Cinema Documentary Competition - World premiere

A Wider Screen A Wider Screen

Director: Joe Hunting

Year: 2019

An intimate window into how virtual reality (VR) app VRChat is affecting people's social lives for the better. This whimsical documentary tells the story of a couple that fall in love inside tangible VR, as well as two friends meeting up in real life for the first time.

An audio cassette tape, with the title 'Childrens Tape for Sue', being repaired. The Solway

Director: Eamon Bourke

Year: 2026

Filmmaker Eamon Bourke lost his mother, Sue, when he was three and has no memory of her. When his father decides to sell the remote Lake District home where she died, Eamon returns with his camera to document the house and its clearing. Among Sue’s belongings - diaries, poems, photographs and tapes - he discovers a box of damaged cassette recordings. After painstakingly repairing them, he uncovers something extraordinary: his mother’s voice. Through these intimate audio diaries, Sue speaks candidly about motherhood, sings to her children, and captures fleeting family moments Eamon never knew. One final tape records her describing the onset of hepatitis, days before she fell into a coma and died in 1983. Another, more haunting still, features three-year-old Eamon calling out to his unconscious mother in hospital, in a desperate attempt to bring her back. As Eamon pieces together this archive, he confronts the enduring impact of early loss, speaking with his father and sisters while retracing the emotional landscape of his childhood. Set against the vast beauty of the Lake District, a deeply personal exploration of grief, memory and love - an attempt to recover what was lost, and to finally say goodbye.