Immersive: All Around Cinema Award

Avinash Changa is VR-maker, director, Creative Technologist, and international speaker on the topic of Immersive works. He is founder of multi-award-winning studio WeMakeVR, with notable productions such as Ashes to Ashes, Meeting Rembrandt, Ahorse!, Angels of Amsterdam, The Saga of Sage, VR2Dome, in collaboration with Dollhouse for Queer Imaginaries (IDFA DocLab ‘24), and Feedback VR, un musical antifuturistica (IDFA DocLab ‘25). In 2026, following the IDFA DocLab 2025 presentation, he is launching IMPRES, the Institute of Immersive Preservation. IMPRES is the infrastructure that finally allows immersive cultural experiences to sustainably be distributed, presented, preserved, and revisited for decades, just like film or music.

Carla Navarro is a strategic events producer and project manager with over 11 years of experience shaping talent ecosystems in international film and XR documentary. From Barcelona and based in Amsterdam, she specialises in delivering talent forums, industry events, and collaborative platforms that connect visionary creators with funders and distributors. She led IDFA’s DocLab Forum since 2022, running the XR non-fiction markets and facilitating hundreds of meetings annually. Her work bridges art, technology, music, and storytelling, with roles at Fiber Festival, Kaboom Animation Film Festival, and In-Edit International Music Documentary Film Festival of the Netherlands, always centred on nurturing emerging voices and enabling global collaboration. She brings a deep understanding of immersive storytelling and a passion for building inclusive, future-facing creative communities.

Graduate of the Department of History and Archaeology, Faculty of Philosophy, Aristotle University of Thessaloniki (1984–1988). He completed his postgraduate studies in Byzantine Archaeology and Art at the same university and wrote his doctoral thesis on 19th-century religious painting. He received his PhD from the Aristotle University of Thessaloniki in 2004. He worked at the Centre for Byzantine Research at Aristotle University of Thessaloniki and at the Centre for the Greek Language. He has participated as a speaker at numerous scientific conferences in Greece and abroad and has taken part in research programs at Aristotle University of Thessaloniki. Since 2017, he has served as an adjunct professor teaching Modern and Contemporary Art History at the Department of Visual and Applied Arts, School of Fine Arts, Aristotle University of Thessaloniki. Since 2021, he has been the Scientific Director and Coordinator of the Aristotle University of Thessaloniki research project Cataloguing the S. Tsoukalas Art Collection. From early 2024 to June 2025, he served as a representative of the Municipality of Thessaloniki on the Board of Directors of the Metropolitan Organization of Visual Arts Museums of Thessaloniki (MOMus). Since April 2024, he has been a member of the seven-member Visual Arts Advisory Committee of the Municipal Gallery of Thessaloniki, and since September 2025, he has been a member of the Collection Management Committee of Aristotle University of Thessaloniki.