Filmmaker and media artist. Mixed reality, VR, installation and documentary film.
World premieres in the SXSW XR Experience Competition, 2023 and 2026.
The true story of Lionia, a retired engineer from Okhtyrka who would not leave his home when the Russian invasion began.Pieces of his house assemble inside the viewer's own room; his family are shadows on the walls, and voices.
World premiere: SXSW XR Experience Competition, Austin, 2026. VRBA Labs, Slovakia, in association with INFAZE Studio.
A VR documentary about the dreams Ukrainians have during the war.Stage: testimonies gathered, screenplay draft completed, technical pipeline tested.
Selected for the DOK Exchange XR Showcase, DOK Leipzig 2026, one of four projects chosen from 43. VRBA Labs, Slovakia.
You stand face to face with people who survived the siege of Kharkiv and still live in the city under shelling.They stand in what is left of their homes and look at you.
World premiere: SXSW XR Experience Competition 2023. Special Mention, Thessaloniki Documentary Festival 2024. Exhibited at the DOX Centre for Contemporary Art, Prague.
Also shown, 2023–2024: IDFA DocLab Spotlight · SIGGRAPH VR Theater · Geneva International Film Festival · FIPADOC, and eight more — see the CV.
A full-size model of a Kh-55 cruise missile in a red room. To deactivate it, you shout at it.
Russian tanks cast in sugar. Over the weeks of the show they melt into one sticky puddle.
A dark room that works as a pinhole camera: the street outside is projected onto a model of a house hit by a missile. In the burnt flats only the white porcelain figurines survived.
A loaf lies in black soil next to a piece of a Russian tank. The work is dedicated to Ukrainian farmers and to the price of that year's bread.
Scans of real burnt Russian military vehicles, made on trips to the north of Ukraine. In the headset their outlines slowly fall apart.
A city and 200 villages were flooded sixty years ago for a Soviet reservoir cascade.On a lonely shore, the viewer pulls a net out of the water. What it brings up dissolves into particles; trees and houses appear, and a figure takes shape and tells part of the story.
Selected for East Doc Platform 2022; its further development stopped when Russia’s full-scale invasion began.
Volodymyr Kolbasa is a filmmaker and media artist bridging cinema and XR.
He holds an MA in Digital Narratives (ifs Internationale Filmschule, Cologne) and an MA in Cinematography (Viewfinder: IADT, SZFE, BFM). With his work documenting the war in Ukraine, he has twice premiered at SXSW XR Competition, with Fresh Memories: The Look (2023) and Lionia Is Leaving (2026) and has shown interactive exhibitions across Europe. His next project, Dreams Under Siege, a VR documentary in development about dreams Ukrainians experience during the war, was selected for the DOK Exchange XR Showcase at DOK Leipzig 2026. Alongside filmmaking, he is a PhD researcher in psychology, studying virtual reality therapy for post-traumatic stress.
CV (PDF) — works, awards and selections, exhibitions, screenings, education.
vkolbasa@gmail.com