Managing Director, Alien Films & Task Films

Eileen Tasca is the managing director of Alien Films and Task Films, and a long-standing creative partner of legendary Polish auteur Jerzy Skolimowski. She served as the Italian producer of EO (2022), winner of the Jury Prize at the Cannes Film Festival and an Academy Award nominee for Best International Feature Film in 2023. The acclaimed parable follows the journey of a humble donkey through the absurdities and harsh realities of the modern world, and stands as one of the most celebrated European art films of recent years.

Her return to Venice carries special resonance: she was executive producer of Skolimowski's 11 Minutes, which had its world premiere at the 2015 Venice Film Festival, went on to win the top prize at the Lisbon Film Festival, and was selected as Poland's official entry for Best Foreign Language Film at the 2016 Academy Awards. Her collaboration with Skolimowski also includes co-financing Essential Killing (2010), honoured at the Venice Film Festival.

Creative Director

Kiddy Lee is a content creator with 3M+ followers and a graduate in documentary filmmaking from the University of Hong Kong. His film Kitty Gun received the Special Jury Recommendation Award at the Beijing International Film Festival.

Kiddy operates his film studio in Hong Kong and has secured more than 50 commercial partnerships with leading companies including ByteDance, Tencent, and Huawei.

In 2025, he was awarded a full scholarship to study AI‑driven film production at HFF Munich. He is currently collaborating with animal rescue shelters, leveraging AI‑generated imagery to explore new narrative possibilities for animal conservation.

Director, Hangzhou Ostar Media Co.,Ltd

Shixin Tao is the director of The Pigeon Ring, an immersive work selected for the Official Competition of Venice Immersive at the 83rd Venice International Film Festival. He is a director and imaging technology creator whose practice focuses on emerging imaging technologies and immersive storytelling. He specializes in identifying the distinctive qualities of different imaging technologies and translating them into narrative tools that serve storytelling and immersive experiences.

He graduated from the Department of Film and Television Technology at the Beijing Film Academy and currently works as a writer-director at MediaStorm, where he develops and creates digital media programs on filmmaking, imaging technologies, and emerging media, with a long-standing focus on making imaging technology accessible to a broader public. He contributed to the HDR imaging pipeline of the film Never Say Never. In 2023, he founded the podcast Immersive101, which explores how imaging technologies shape immersive experiences.

In recent years, his practice has expanded into 4D imaging and spatial computing. He maintains a long-term collaboration with 4DV.ai, continuously exploring the applications of 4D Gaussian Splatting across traditional filmmaking and immersive media.

Independent Director

Zhang Yuqi is the director of The Pigeon Ring, an immersive work selected for the Official Competition of Venice Immersive at the 83rd Venice International Film Festival. Combining family memory with emerging spatial imaging technologies, The Pigeon Ring uses 4D Gaussian Splatting to reconstruct live-action performances and real family spaces, allowing experiencers to truly “enter” and inhabit the memories of a Chinese family while further exploring the possibilities of live-action imagery in 6DoF immersive storytelling.

She is a young independent director with a BA in Cinematography and Production from the Communication University of China and an MArch in Cinematic and Videogame Architecture from the Bartlett School of Architecture, UCL. The Pigeon Ring is her first directorial work after graduation and marks an important starting point in her practice as an independent director working with immersive media.

Her practice explores how immersive media can reshape the relationship between experiencers and stories, while exploring the creative possibilities offered by 4D Gaussian Splatting and other emerging technologies. Rather than being confined to a fixed viewpoint, experiencers are free to explore, interact, and gradually discover the story for themselves.

CEO, MIMAOKU; Founder, ANFFF

Kean Cao is a producer, international cultural event curator and PR specialist. She serves as President of MIMAOKU Culture & Media Co., Ltd. (Shanghai & UK), Chair of International Nature Bond CIC (INB CIC), Artistic Director of ANF (Animal · Nature · Future) and Founder of the ANFFF Film Festival. She is also the Asia PR Representative for the Cannes Palm Dog Award and for WeShort, the short film distribution platform. With extensive experience in international co-production film development, global festival operations and cross-cultural exchange, she will serve as moderator of this forum, guiding the panel through an in-depth conversation on emerging technologies and the future of cinema.