Chloé Rochereuil Brings True Crime Into Mixed Reality With Crafting Crimes: The Mona Lisa Heist
- TYREE POPE III
- Mar 14
- 2 min read
At SXSW, director Chloé Rochereuil is redefining how audiences experience true crime.
Her immersive project Crafting Crimes invites viewers to step inside history’s most famous crime scenes through mixed reality storytelling.
Instead of watching a crime unfold on screen, participants actively reconstruct it.
Rebuilding Crime Scenes in Miniature
The newest installment in the series, Crafting Crimes: The Mona Lisa Heist, transports audiences to Paris in 1911, when one of the most famous artworks in the world disappeared from the Louvre.
The theft of the Mona Lisa, carried out by Vincenzo Peruggia, shocked the art world and transformed the painting into a global cultural icon.
In Rochereuil’s immersive recreation, audiences piece together the timeline of the crime using miniature environments.
Participants physically assemble the scene object by object using hand tracking technology. As the puzzle comes together, the narrative gradually unfolds.
A True Crime Story Told Through Scale
One of the most distinctive elements of Crafting Crimes is its visual style.
Rather than photorealistic reconstructions, the series uses miniature environments and shadow figures to represent the crimes.
The choice was intentional.
Immersive technology can make experiences feel extremely intense. Using miniatures allows the audience to maintain emotional distance while still engaging deeply with the story.
The aesthetic also draws inspiration from the work of Frances Glessner Lee, the early forensic pioneer who built miniature crime scenes to train investigators.
A Blend of Journalism and Storytelling
Before entering the immersive media world, Rochereuil worked as a journalist.
That background plays a major role in how the series is developed.
Every detail in Crafting Crimes is carefully researched and fact checked using historical documents, police archives, and floor plans.
The goal is to create an experience that functions both as historical journalism and narrative entertainment.
Why Interactivity Changes the Experience
Unlike traditional true crime documentaries or podcasts, Crafting Crimes places the audience inside the investigation.
Participants actively build the crime scene before entering it.
That act of participation changes the viewer’s relationship with the story.
Instead of passively hearing about events, audiences feel like they are discovering the narrative themselves.
The result is a deeper level of engagement and focus.
True Crime in the Immersive Era
True crime has become one of the most popular storytelling genres across podcasts, television, and film.
Rochereuil believes immersive media represents the next evolution of the format.
Mixed reality allows audiences to explore spaces, examine evidence, and experience environments in ways traditional media cannot replicate.
Why SXSW Is the Perfect Stage
For Rochereuil, SXSW is the ideal venue to present a project like Crafting Crimes.
The festival sits at the intersection of technology, film, music, and storytelling.
That creative overlap makes it one of the few places where immersive media can be experienced by audiences from multiple industries.
And for Crafting Crimes, that diverse audience is exactly the point.
The series is designed not only for XR enthusiasts but for anyone curious about the future of storytelling.
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