A line had snaked down Broadway an hour before the AI Film Festival was set to begin, and the excitement was already simmering. People showed up ready to watch a new wave of films crafted with creative software from Runway AI and other platforms, but plenty of folks in the crowd confessed they were also part of the show, contributing work that would be featured on the big screen.
Lincoln Center’s Alice Tully Hall transformed into a hub for this unusual celebration, coated in black and white banners splashed with the Runway logo, and a man wearing an “I heart AI” tee found his spot for selfies near the window. “I just want to see something interesting,” someone murmured while snapping a photo, and that curiosity was about to get answered.
Inside, the crowd watched as ten machine-made movies unfolded over two hours, sharing an aura that was inventive, dreamy, and often downright surreal. There was a painterly short recalling a tough childhood in Madagascar, a pulse-quickening flick packed with rapidly shifting sonograms, and a story about a chicken companion helping a prisoner turn a new leaf.
Runway co-founder Cristóbal Valenzuela, who took the stage in front of the packed house, reflected on the growth of these technology-driven movies over time. “Three years ago, this was such a crazy idea,” he said, drawing murmurs from the audience when he announced they’d received 6,000 submissions, up from just 300 the year before.
Unexpected Artistry and Audience Reactions
Helping to shape the conversation was genre-bending producer Flying Lotus, who shared, “A lot of people are terrified to talk about this. But I use the tools myself!” His advice as he left the stage was playful but clear: forget the rulebook and just create.
The films themselves embraced the quirks of artificial intelligence, weaving unpredictable images of floating people and upside-down rain right into their stories. One project called Fragments of Nowhere leaned into these visual oddities, suggesting the uncanny was simply another take on reality.
The overall vibe combined an art school gathering with the high stakes of Hollywood’s future, sparking plenty of discussion about the power and limits of technology-generated imagery. Nobody wanted to get bogged down in debates about training material or what was borrowed from earlier works, but everyone seemed to agree something fresh was happening in filmmaking.
After the films wrapped up, Valenzuela returned to reward the creators behind the winning pieces, giving the runner-up nod to Jailbird for its deeply human themes. The grand prize, though, went to Total Pixel Space, a wild ride that imagined an infinite universe of possible films and asked what creativity even means if options are limitless.
As people left the hall, the conversations bubbled over with speculation, creative energy, and a little bit of skepticism. One guy with a beard turned to his friend, unable to hold back the question: “Is it just me or were you thinking about which prompts they used the whole time?”
