To watch the full experience click here.

What is it like to flee your home and start again in a new country? Between April 2016 and March 2017, 36,846 people applied for asylum in the UK. As of March, a backlog in cases meant the total number of people still waiting for a decision stood at nearly 31,500.



While asylum seekers wait for their Home Office interview and the subsequent decision, they live on £5 a day and are unable to work or choose where they live. In Limbo you step into their shoes and experience their state of mind while you wait for the decision that will determine the rest of your life.



The piece was made after conducting interviews with asylum seekers from 12 countries as well as immigration lawyers and barristers. The voices in the soundtrack are those of real refugees who guide the viewer through the experience – from arriving in an unfamiliar city to acute worry for loved ones left behind, concern about not being allowed to work, and the Home Office interview on which so much rides . They spoke about the often slow and painful process of the application and the subsequent wait to be reunited with their families. The Home Office aims to make an initial decision within six months, but many wait longer than this. Despite access to services from refugee charities, for the most part they are unable to travel, work or learn English.

Guardian VR wanted to capture the sense of isolation that many interviewees spoke about, caught between two lives, that of the place they left and the new one they hope to build . The piece was made in collaboration with the creative practice ScanLAB Projects, which specialises in creating digital replicas of environments using innovative 3D scanning technology. The resulting monochrome sketch-like aesthetic has the quality of a dream or nightmare where worlds are transparent and fragmented.

If you want to watch the film as a VR experience you can put your phone into Google cardboard and watch it on YouTube in cardboard mode. It’s also available on the Guardian VR app from the Google Play Store. It will be also be available soon on Gear VR.