Maxim Nikonov
Russian film and interactive projects director, educator, one of the pioneers and researchers of virtual cinema, and founder of Virtual Cinema Laboratory. Producer of the Kultura 360 VR Film Festival.
Biography
A description of the key events in my life,
as well as the creative projects that shaped and influenced
the development of my artistic career.
Family and Early Years
(1989–2009)
I was born on May 2, 1989, in Leningrad, into a family of a radio engineering process engineer. My parents are Vyacheslav Mikhailovich Nikonov and Elena Nikolaevna Nikonova. From an early age, I developed a wide range of interests, including music (guitar), chess, computer animation, and graphic design. I graduated with honors and a gold medal from Secondary School No. 285, specializing in information technologies.
In 2006, I won the Grand Prix at the All-Russian multimedia festival A Glimpse into the Future for my animated 3D short film About Fyodor. Following this, I was admitted without entrance exams to Saint Petersburg University of the Humanities and Social Sciences (SPbUHSS), Department of Multimedia Directing, with a specialization in Film and Television, in the workshop of Valentin Dmitrievich Soshnikov. Due to my academic excellence, I was granted a full tuition waiver.
During my studies, I combined education with professional work, directing commercial video projects and specializing in video design. At the same time, I founded and organized 3D graphics and animation courses for secondary school students and taught at School No. 285 for three years.

Early Career and First Projects
(2009–2014)

At the beginning of 2009, while still a third-year student, my search for professional work led me to meet Sergei Zhanievich Davitaya — the founder of the World Congress of Science and Culture Figures and the author of numerous projects at the intersection of science and art. He later had a profound influence on my creative approach and worldview. As a result, in 2009 I began collaborating with the Cinemaphonica production center founded by Davitaya, and from 2010 to 2012 I served there as Deputy General Director for cultural projects.
During this period, I took an active part in producing audiovisual content and working on projects such as The World Squad of Young Cosmonauts, Orthodox Rus’, The Great Land of Dolmens, Geniuses and Masterpieces, and the congress Science, Information, Consciousness. I also participated in an expedition to Russia’s Krasnodar region for topographical research of dolmens and worked on a number of film projects. At that time, I had the opportunity to meet and collaborate with leading figures of culture and art, including Tonino Guerra, Boris Eifman, Oleg Yakhnín, Alexander Sokurov, Anton Lubchenko, Alexei German Jr., Grigory Pototsky, and others.
In 2010, my first non-fiction film, Veliput, premiered at the Rodina cinema in Saint Petersburg as part of a festival dedicated to International Children’s Day. The film tells the story of the first Russian ethnographic expedition to the Kingdom of Cambodia. Organized by the Russian Ethnographic Museum, the expedition aimed to assemble a unique collection titled The Eurasian Continental Civilization.
In 2011, I graduated from university with honors and entered postgraduate studies specializing in art history. I also began teaching video design as well as the theory and practice of film editing. My academic supervisor for the dissertation “The Interaction of Sound and Visual Images in a Multimedia Environment” was Irina Arkadyevna Aldoshina — Professor of Sound Engineering, Doctor of Technical Sciences, and a member of the Acoustics Coordination Council of the Russian Academy of Sciences.
In 2012, I completed work on the short documentary My Friend Theo Angelopoulos. Saint Petersburg, a documentary portrait about the relationship between Theo Angelopoulos and the city of Saint Petersburg. The film is based on a unique interview recorded during the renowned director’s visit to the city, in which he reflects on the reasons for his journey and his personal connection to Saint Petersburg. The film was selected for a documentary film festival in Thessaloniki, Greece.
Later in 2012, following the passing of Sergei Zhanievich Davitaya, the activities of the Cinemaphonica production center came to an end, and work on several film projects was discontinued.
In the summer of 2013, I traveled to Kabardino-Balkaria to climb Mount Elbrus, journeying by hitchhiking and filming the documentary The Road Above the Clouds. During this time, I developed a growing interest in avant-garde technological approaches to cinema, explored new methods of image capture and playback, studied foreign languages at an institute in Saint Petersburg, and continued working on commissioned video productions, including promotional and commercial films. I became particularly drawn to the possibilities of interactive technologies in cinema and to spherical video and 360° panoramic filming.
Research into 360° Video and Virtual Cinema. First Commissions and Projects
(2014–2016)

In January 2014, I published my article “Cinema of a New Type” in the inaugural issue of the academic journal Scientific Opinion. The article explored the concept of a new historical and interactive stage in the development of world cinema and proposed the possibility of creating films of a fundamentally new technical level that had not previously existed.
Throughout 2014, I actively conducted experiments with 360° and 3D 360° video production, collaborating in this field with the Petersburg Kinoartel film studio. That same year, I became one of the first directors in the world to view and present my own 360° footage through the Oculus Rift virtual reality headset. I documented this experience in the academic paper “The Influence of Sound on the Realism of Perception When Using a New Method of Video Playback with the Oculus Rift Virtual Reality Headset”, published in Issue No. 5 of Scientific Opinion.
During this period, I founded the creative group Cinemactive (later rebranded as LenVR, then RosVR, and eventually Virtual Cinema Laboratory LLC), focusing on the production of interactive films and VR projects. I also became a fourth-year course mentor in multimedia directing at Saint Petersburg University of the Humanities and Social Sciences and was appointed Head of International Activities within the Department of Film and Television.
In 2015, I met Nikolai Gorely — the creator and ideologist of the Geek Picnic festival — who proposed a collaboration on what was planned to become the first interactive 3D 360° film, Chernobyl VR. The project was officially announced in March 2015 at the TechTrendsExpo, an exhibition dedicated to cutting-edge technologies.
In the spring of 2015, I directed my first 360° documentary film about Saint Petersburg, Saint Petersburg VR, commissioned by Prosense. The film features aerial flights over the city’s main landmarks accompanied by historical narration. During its production, drone-based 360° filming technology was tested for the first time.
In the summer of 2015, together with my team, I successfully participated in the Geek Picnic and VKontakte festivals, where we premiered 360° videos with integrated interactive elements. These elements allowed viewers not only to observe the action but to actively interact with the content. At the VKontakte festival, I met Vitaly Tikhonov, founder of Total Interactive. As a result, on September 5, we conducted the first 360° aerial shoot of the city of Tver using a multicopter equipped with newly developed stabilization technology.
On September 19, 2015, the Chernobyl VR project was launched on the Russian crowdfunding platform Boomstarter. The campaign did not reach its funding goal, and the project was subsequently put on hold indefinitely. On October 1, 2015, as part of the Message to Man International Film Festival, a roundtable discussion titled “3D, 360° Video, and Other Contemporary Interactive Technologies in Cinema” was held at the Saint Petersburg State Institute of Film and Television. During this event, I presented my vision of a new direction in the film industry to a large audience of film students and professionals for the first time.
In late November 2015, together with Ilya Marchenko, my partner from Hexagon, I traveled to Hong Kong for a ten-day working visit. The goals of the trip included organizing a test multicopter flight with 360° aerial filming, establishing partnerships with Spontaneous Combustion Productions — the first company to offer aerial drone filming services in Hong Kong — and producing a 360° film about Hong Kong as well as a short 360° piece about Macau. Work on Hong Kong VR was completed in April 2016, and exclusive screening rights were sold to the American company Ascape.
On April 18, 2016, in Moscow at the House of Cinema, I took part in the educational program of the Saint Anna Open Festival of Student and Debut Films, where I delivered a lecture titled “The Possibilities of Spherical Cinema (VR360) and Interactive Art in Virtual Reality.”
First Original VR Films
(2016–2017)

In the summer of 2016, I organized the production of a documentary VR film about climbing Mount Elbrus. Elbrus VR became the first Russian documentary shot in virtual reality in 2016, capturing the ascent to the highest peak in Europe.
Elbrus VR is a contemplative exploration of why people strive to reach summits, despite the harsh conditions of mountain life. Every year, hundreds of climbers come to Elbrus to reach the peak of this volcano. The film premiered at the 39th Moscow International Film Festival as part of the RUSSIAN VR SEASONS program. Later, at the 2023 Kultura 360 VR Film Festival, Elbrus VR was recognized by the professional jury as the best non-fiction VR film.
In the summer of 2017, I directed my first narrative VR film, Out of Body, a 13-minute mystical thriller. The film was created for the RUSSIAN VR SEASONS program at the Moscow International Film Festival. It became one of the first staged narrative experimental projects in Russia’s emerging VR cinema, marking a significant step in the development of domestic VR filmmaking practices.
VR Projects with Major Film Companies
(2018–2022)

In November 2018, commissioned by the film company Force Media, I completed a VR teaser for the Russian horror film Rassvet (Dawn) and organized its premiere for guests of Starcon, the largest science fiction festival in the CIS, held in Moscow and Saint Petersburg. This two-minute teaser became one of the first 360° VR projects in the practice of Russian film studios. For me, it was my first commercial narrative VR assignment.
Also in 2018, I resigned from the university and ended my regular work in education to dedicate more time to creative projects and business ventures.
The next significant and complex cinematic project was Time Portal Berlin — a VR film created for a Berlin museum. Its goal was to immerse visitors in a condensed history of Berlin through virtual reality, forming a cohesive, atmospheric representation of the city and its historical journey. Work on the commissioned project began in September 2019, and by 2020 two pilot scenes had been completed: the first depicting the book burning at Bebelplatz, and the second showing an aerial attack on the city in 1945.
The production addressed some of the most challenging creative tasks in Russian VR filmmaking at the time: combining computer graphics, motion capture, directing large-scale crowd scenes, 3D architectural modeling, historical reconstruction, costume design, natural effects simulation, and high-resolution filming. The project is currently on hold due to the COVID-19 pandemic and subsequent military events in 2020.
In March 2021, I had the opportunity to participate in a self-initiated “round-the-world” expedition to Lake Baikal. Over the course of a month, I traveled the region capturing photographs and VR video. This resulted in the creation of a VR film about Baikal, which was included in the experimental Roscosmos project Sirius-2021, designed for cosmonauts testing long-term confinement conditions. The VR headset on board featured, among other content, the Baikal film.
In the same year, commissioned by the Institute for Internet Development (IRI) and in collaboration with Moviestart and Bazelevs studios, I worked as VR supervisor and post-production director on a historical educational mini-series in VR (360° video) titled Tolstoy and Turgenev. The three-episode series focused on the lives of Leo Tolstoy and Ivan Turgenev and was filmed in Saint Petersburg and Yasnaya Polyana. The producer and director of the project was Andrey Salnikov, director of the Kinoles festival. Meeting Andrey marked the beginning of a productive creative partnership.
Another significant directorial work for me in 2022 was a VR music video for the song Dead Anarchist by the band Korol i Shut, commissioned by Kinopoisk. The video was filmed on the sets of the original series with the series’ actors. On March 2, 2023, the Korol i Shut series about the iconic Russian punk band premiered on Kinopoisk. On the same day, the exhibition Punk Culture. Korol i Shut opened at the Center for Contemporary Art in Moscow, where visitors could also experience the VR music video.
The First Professional Virtual Cinema Festival in Saint Petersburg: “Kultura 360”
(2023)

The culmination of my decade-long work (2014–2024) in the practice, research, and development of virtual cinema in Russia was the creation of the Kultura 360 VR film festival. In 2023, the project won a grant from the Presidential Fund for Cultural Initiatives (PFKI). I organized the festival in collaboration with Andrey Salnikov, serving as both producer and program director. Kultura 360 became a landmark event in Russia’s VR cinema industry.
From February 17 to 19, 2023, Saint Petersburg hosted open competitive screenings of the best Russian VR films, along with masterclasses on VR filmmaking for audiences of all ages.
Kultura 360
The festival’s competition program featured narrative and documentary films by Russian directors in 360° video format. Selection was conducted with the participation of leading VR industry experts and prominent film professionals. The jury included Alexander Gorokhov, Konstantin Bronzit, Egor Chichkanov, Anton Utkin, Georgy Molodtsov, and Evgeny Puzyrevsky.
In the fall of 2023, I officially registered the company Virtual Cinema Laboratory LLC (VRKINO).
Secrets of the Ice Planet
Teaser for the Dome Film
Dome Film for Planetarium 1 in Saint Petersburg in Collaboration with Yandex
(2024–2025)

In the fall of 2024, I began work on a Yandex project: creating a dome-format film for Planetarium 1 in Saint Petersburg, titled Secrets of the Ice Planet. The planetarium features the world’s largest projection screen. This project intrigued me with the challenge of visually realizing live-action scenes with actors on a dome screen, from the perspectives of cinematography and frame composition, as well as the opportunity to practically visualize complex combined scenes featuring both fantastical and historical narratives.
The project was realized through a collaboration between two studios: Virtual Cinema (VRKINO) and the Planetarium 1 studio, which handled the production of most computer-generated scenes. Virtual Cinema focused on filming live-action scenes with actors and creating combined shots.
The central theme of the film is the diversity and significance of ice in human life. The story follows the journeys of three characters from different historical periods, all connected by the theme of ice: Fabian Bellingshausen, the explorer of Antarctica; a contemporary glaciologist searching for life in a subglacial lake in Antarctica; and a cosmonaut seeking a new home for humanity on a distant icy planet. The film premiered in March 2025.
The Second “Kultura 360” Film Festival in Saint Petersburg
(2025)

I continued my role as program director and producer for the second Kultura 360 festival, which featured an expanded program and was larger in scale compared to the inaugural edition in 2023. The festival now aims not only to promote virtual cinema, which remains a promising field, but also to advance and popularize the most cutting-edge new forms of cinematic art.
In 2025, the festival showcased the best Russian works across five key categories: VR cinema, AI cinema, interactive cinema, dome cinema, and screenlife.
Kultura 360 2 (2025)
How the Festival of New Forms of Cinema Unfolded
On December 5, 2025, at the Kultura 360 festival, the premiere of Dostoevsky 360
Dostoevsky 360
the first full-length narrative VR film in Russia about the life and work of Fyodor Dostoevsky
For more details, visit the project website

2026 – Present

I am currently continuing the development of my company, directing, producing video content, and engaging in educational activities.