The second AI Film Festival recently concluded in New York after a successful premiere in Los Angeles. The event began with a 90-minute program that featured a panel discussion moderated by IndieWire’s Dana Harris-Bridson. The panel included insights from filmmakers Joel Kuwahara and Paul Trillo, musician Claire Evans, and Cristobal Valenzuela, CEO and co-founder of Runway, the organization behind the festival. Discussions centered on important topics like the ethical implications of AI, concerns over job displacement, and the evolving nature of the medium. This served as a fitting introduction to the showcase of 10 finalist films.
Since its debut, the AIFF has been focused on exploring the convergence of AI and cinema. Last year’s festival received 300 submissions, but this year saw over 2,500 entries, demonstrating a growing interest in how AI is transforming film. Participants were required to submit films between 1-10 minutes long, with AI playing a key role in at least one stage of the creation process. A panel of industry experts, including filmmakers, executives, and technologists such as Trillo, Valenzuela, and Bryn Mooser (Documentary+), judged the entries.
The competition offered significant rewards, with the Grand Prix winner taking home $15,000 and 1 million Runway credits. The second and third place winners also received substantial prizes, including $10,000 and $5,000, along with 500,000 Runway credits each.
This year’s Grand Prix went to Daniel Antebi’s “Get Me Out,” a poignant narrative that beautifully illustrated how AI can enhance both the visual and emotional depth of cinematic storytelling. Antebi, an accomplished director, is no stranger to accolades—his 2019 short film A DIOS earned him a Sundance Ignite Fellowship, while another short, SOFT, premiered at SXSW in 2020. Antebi’s debut feature, GOD’S TIME, premiered at Tribeca in 2022, where it won a special jury award and was later released on Hulu.
Runway, the company behind the festival, has been at the forefront of AI-driven creative tools since its founding in 2018 by Cristobal Valenzuela, Anastasis Germanidis, and Alejandro Matamala-Ortiz. The company’s rapid growth was further fueled by a $141 million funding round in June 2023, with backing from industry giants like Google and Nvidia. This brought Runway’s total investment to $237 million, setting the stage for future advancements in AI-powered creativity.
Valenzuela’s vision for the future of AI in filmmaking is ambitious. He believes video generation is just a stepping stone toward the development of world models capable of producing fully immersive visual environments. “We’re on the cusp of democratizing and accelerating the creative process, fundamentally changing how art is produced and experienced,” Valenzuela shared. He predicts that in five years, we will see real-time simulators capable of creating entire worlds, much like video games but with entirely new forms of artistic expression.
While AIFF is an exciting platform for the rapidly growing community of AI-driven filmmakers, the technology is still in its infancy. The limitations of current AI tools meant that filmmakers were constrained to creating short video clips, and challenges like character continuity and lip-syncing persisted. As a result, many of the films, while ambitious, felt experimental or abstract, reminiscent of avant-garde art.
That said, AI’s unique visual qualities offer glimpses of a new cinematic language. Projects like Paul Trillo’s AI-driven music video “The Hardest Part” showcase a new frontier in filmmaking, where directors and writers can experiment with tools previously available only to major studios. Yet, despite these advances, the core of what audiences crave—compelling stories and unforgettable characters—remains unchanged. As AI continues to evolve, its role in filmmaking should be seamless, enhancing storytelling without overshadowing it.
