Produced by BBC Connected Studio in collaboration with Aardman Digital, the film, We Wait, is a dramatised depiction of migrants making the journey from Turkey to Greece on smugglers’ boats. It uses animation to bring to life real accounts from migrants gathered by BBC News.

The film begins on the beaches of Turkey, and from there takes viewers on board a vessel and claims to provide a visceral understanding of those journeying to Europe, offering an immersive experience that the BBC says would be impossible to reproduce through traditional reporting.

The film comes hot on the heels of the launch by BBC R&D experimental The Turning Forest VR fairy tale for Daydream, Google’s mobile VR offering, which was originally created for the Oculus Rift.

Commenting on the film, Zillah Watson, executive producer, BBC R&D, said: “We Wait has enabled us to explore how VR can deepen audiences’ understanding of a topic in a way they wouldn’t otherwise be able to experience – a migrant’s perilous journey to Europe. It also offers a distinct way in which to deliver news content, and could be a very interesting tool for telling news stories in the future beyond the confines of traditional reporting.

“This film going live on the Oculus store for the Rift opens the film up to a wider audience, and caps off a big year for VR at the BBC, as we continue to explore the potential this emerging medium has to inform, educate and entertain. Our VR experiments this year have enabled us to look at the role the BBC should play at this early stage, raising important questions over how storytelling, pacing, direction, subtitling, sound and picture quality are all affected.”

We Wait is now available for free globally on the Oculus store, and more information on the film can be found on BBC Taster.