A $2,000 AI-Produced Film Set to Premiere at Tribeca

Next month’s Tribeca Festival will showcase the debut of an AI-generated film titled Dreams of Violets. This 75-minute feature is a fictional dramatization of the Iranian government’s mass killing of protestors in January, with all characters and visuals created entirely by AI.

The film was produced for just $2,000 and draws inspiration from journalistic reports, photographs, and eyewitness accounts. It was developed by brothers Ash and Pooya Koosha, who left Iran in 2009. Pooya is a co-founder of Fountain 0, the studio behind the film, while Ash serves as its CEO.

Fountain 0 claims that Dreams of Violets is the first full-length, live-action, AI-generated film to be accepted into a major film festival. While a more expensive AI-generated film, Hell Grind, was shown at Cannes, it was part of a side event rather than the main lineup. The Koosha brothers utilized Google’s Nano Banana for image creation, Kling AI for video generation, and Anthropic’s Claude for language editing.

In the past year, AI has increasingly become a significant tool in Hollywood. Netflix is diving into this technology by launching an AI animation studio and acquiring Ben Affleck’s AI startup, while Amazon’s Prime Video has ordered three AI-generated animated series. Additionally, Critterz, a film that utilized OpenAI’s now-defunct Sora tool, is on the lookout for a new AI partner.

“We fully understand the very genuine sensitivities of those individuals working in the movie industry, and like them, we are concerned about the unknown implications for the livelihoods of many,” the Kooshas stated. “But the reality is that this film never would have been made if it were not for the AI capabilities that we were able to develop.”

Dreams of Violets is set to screen at the Tribeca Festival on June 10th.