{"slug": "at-the-shanghai-film-festival-ai-gets-its-mainstream-break", "title": "At the Shanghai Film Festival, AI Gets Its Mainstream Break", "summary": "The Shanghai International Film Festival introduced its first AI-focused program, AI Studio, in collaboration with Hailuo AI, selecting 22 participants from 500 applicants to explore AI integration in filmmaking. The program culminated in a live AI video creation challenge and panel discussions, with experts noting AI's potential to change cinema while emphasizing the continued importance of traditional filmmaking skills.", "body_md": "[NEWS](/features/26166/news?source=normal_article)\n\n### At the Shanghai Film Festival, AI Gets Its Mainstream Break\n\n[He Qitong](/users/1013353/he-qitong?source=normal_article)\n\nThe Shanghai International Film Festival (SIFF) has introduced an AI-focused program for the first time, creating a space to discuss AI integration into filmmaking in addition to showcasing acclaimed films from around the world.\n\nThe festival, now in its 28th year, runs from June 12 to 21. It is China’s only film festival to receive accreditation by the International Federation of Film Producers Associations.\n\nIts new section, “AI Studio,” was jointly launched by SIFF and Hailuo AI, a content-generation platform under Shanghai-based tech company MiniMax. Beginning May 13, it invited both traditional filmmakers and AI creators to participate in a monthlong collaboration exploring the integration of AI and film.\n\nFrom a pool of roughly 500 applications from around the world, just 22 were selected and divided into four teams, pairing filmmakers with AI-generated content (AIGC) creators.\n\nDuring the program, participants were required to create a video longer than five minutes and to record their work log, raw materials, and the creation process. A corresponding academic team composed of renowned film directors, producers, and film professors observed and evaluated the teams’ work and processes.\n\nThe program culminated in a two-day event, June 14 to 15, in which each team was tasked with creating an AI-generated video on site within six hours.\n\nOne team, assigned to create “a story about a film fan,” took inspiration from the festival’s ticket stubs, which this year are designed as collectible puzzle pieces. They created a 103-second short film about how a single movie ticket rekindles the protagonist’s lifelong passion for cinema, following them from childhood to old age.\n\nThe event also featured panel discussions between participants and industry experts.\n\nHuang Lei, a director and a recipient of SIFF nominations in previous years, said that using AI during the event had changed his perspective on filmmaking.\n\n“AI has its own technical barriers and underlying logic. The simplest approach is to accept it and understand it,” Huang said. “There is no absolute good or bad. The key is how you use it.”\n\nExperts attending the event also highlighted the importance of traditional filmmaking. “A true AI studio is not simply about typing a sentence and getting a video,” Sun Bin, deputy dean of the School of Theater, Film and Television at the Communication University of China, said, adding that though AI has made some tasks faster, it has not made creativity simpler.\n\nSun said that AI-assisted filmmaking still involves a wide range of tasks, including “script writing, fact-checking, building character and scene … and maintaining character continuity.”\n\nTong Ying, deputy director of the Shanghai International Film and TV Festival Center, said that the goal of the festival’s AI Studio is “to create an industry case study that can be observed, discussed, and preserved, providing a real-world reference for understanding, using, and evaluating AI in filmmaking.”\n\nHuang Jianxin, a film director and dean of the School of Film at Xiamen University, also in attendance at the event, predicted that the structure of cinema itself could change.\n\n“AI already surpasses live-action filmmaking in depicting legends, myths, and supernatural subjects,” he said. “Could there eventually be a genre called AI cinema, with its own distinct aesthetic system?”\n\n*Editor: Marianne Gunnarsson.*\n\n*(Header image: A promotional image for the Shanghai International Film Festival’s AI Studio. From Weibo)*", "url": "https://wpnews.pro/news/at-the-shanghai-film-festival-ai-gets-its-mainstream-break", "canonical_source": "https://www.sixthtone.com/news/1018660/At the Shanghai Film Festival, AI Gets Its Mainstream Break", "published_at": "2026-06-17 10:58:37.772873+00:00", "updated_at": "2026-06-17 10:58:40.570458+00:00", "lang": "en", "topics": ["artificial-intelligence", "generative-ai", "ai-tools", "ai-ethics", "ai-research"], "entities": ["Shanghai International Film Festival", "Hailuo AI", "MiniMax", "Huang Lei", "Sun Bin", "Tong Ying", "Huang Jianxin", "Communication University of China"], "alternates": {"html": "https://wpnews.pro/news/at-the-shanghai-film-festival-ai-gets-its-mainstream-break", "markdown": "https://wpnews.pro/news/at-the-shanghai-film-festival-ai-gets-its-mainstream-break.md", "text": "https://wpnews.pro/news/at-the-shanghai-film-festival-ai-gets-its-mainstream-break.txt", "jsonld": "https://wpnews.pro/news/at-the-shanghai-film-festival-ai-gets-its-mainstream-break.jsonld"}}