This film festival left me feeling better about AI moviemaking

Runway's fourth annual AI Film Festival in Los Angeles showcased 10 short films made entirely with AI video tools, leaving a Fast Company reporter feeling optimistic about the technology's creative potential. The festival highlighted rapid advances in AI video generation and filmmakers' growing skill in using it, despite ongoing controversy over AI's impact on Hollywood.

Hello again from Fast Company and welcome to Plugged In . A quick housekeeping note: We will be off next week. See you on July 10. Last week, I attended a film festival in Los Angeles. It felt, well, festive, with a step-and-repeat backdrop for photo ops, celebratory cocktails, and an enthusiastic full house for the evening’s program of 10 short movies. The most notable thing about the event, however, was what it didn’t have: any films created using old-timey techniques such as pointing a camera at human actors. This was Runway’s AI Festival https://aif.runwayml.com/ , the fourth-annual screening organized by the maker of AI models and tools https://www.fastcompany.com/91393242/runways-ai-can-edit-reality-hollywood-is-paying-attention for generating synthetic video. Back in 2023, when Runway held its first festival https://www.fastcompany.com/90820457/a-new-film-festival-will-only-show-movies-made-using-ai , algorithms for video creation were in their infancy—more magic trick than storytelling medium. But as with many things about AI https://www.fastcompany.com/section/artificial-intelligence , progress is happening at a head-snapping pace. A Fast Company Next Big Things in Tech honoree https://www.fastcompany.com/91411625/foundational-ai-next-big-things-in-tech-2025 in 2025, Runway is at the forefront of the industry’s effort to produce models that can simulate cinematic realism at greater length and with more consistency from shot to shot. Just as important, filmmakers have had three more years to get their heads around AI video’s powers and limitations. Those who submitted works for this year’s festival weren’t required to use Runway’s technologies and tools, but the company says “the vast majority” likely did. Not having been to any of Runway’s previous festivals, I wasn’t sure what to expect from this one. Left to their own devices, consumer AI products such as ChatGPT and Gemini churn out imagery whose primary distinguishing characteristic is its suffocating blandness. I was concerned the festival’s filmmakers might be unable to overcome the technology’s tendency to genericize everything, but willing to give them a chance. Now, it must be said that even guarded open-mindedness about AI-generated movies remains controversial. In April, Cannes—the most famous film festival of them all— banned them from competition https://studio.aifilms.ai/blog/cannes-2026-ai-ban-official-selection . There are reasonable people who believe the technology is destroying Hollywood https://variety.com/2023/digital/features/hollywood-ai-crisis-atificial-intelligence-eliminate-acting-jobs-1235697167/ and amounts to a colossal act of intellectual property theft https://jskfellows.stanford.edu/theft-is-not-fair-use-474e11f0d063 . Slop videos on YouTube are a real problem https://www.fastcompany.com/91519733/youtube-urged-hundreds-experts-protect-kids-ai-slop-videos . Some people come away from the films in Runway’s festivals despising AI more than ever https://www.wired.com/story/cream-of-the-slop-an-ai-film-festival-screening-left-me-with-more-questions-than-answers/ . Regardless of what you think about AI, Emma Thorne’s bravura takedown https://youtu.be/mTV3b6uTup8?si=T-dvLCd3samkTxPZ of last year’s edition is worth a watch. Still, as I sat in the BroadStage theater at the Santa Monica College Performing Arts Center, I tried to put all these legitimate issues aside for one night. Once the two panel discussions that began the night were over, I didn’t even want to think about technology. I just hoped to experience storytelling that succeeded on its own terms—and, since I was watching the work of multiple filmmakers, to be exposed to a variety of approaches rather than a sea of sameness. With those criteria in the front of my mind, I was encouraged by the 2026 Runway show. Nothing in it struck me as slop, and no two films bore much resemblance to each other. I was entertained. I laughed out loud a few times. Occasionally, my heartstrings even found themselves being successfully tugged. The festival’s top honor went to the story of an indomitable Parisian born with most unusual looks, Robert Gaudette’s A Face Only a Mother Could Love. It’s largely photorealistic in style, though the protagonist has the feel of a character from a forgotten children’s book. Rewatching it just now on YouTube, I was struck by the intimacy of the storytelling, which uses tight shots to establish a point of view in a way I don’t associate with AI imagery. Then again, one line of dialogue—“The brioche smell like a Tuesday miracle ”—does sound like something ChatGPT would say. My own Best of Show might go to Where Knights Fall, by a filmmaker known as Mathery Speaking of beautiful but boring: AI’s overarching promise to independent filmmakers may be its ability to amp up their work’s production values far beyond what they could achieve with older production techniques. That isn’t an unalloyed benefit. A few of the festival’s entries were overwhelmed by their own lavishness, including Dorian and Daniel’s The Well , a sort of As with other applications of AI, such as writing https://www.fastcompany.com/91550021/ai-assisted-journalism , less is usually more. I preferred the stripped-down, cartoony Postman , starring a mail-delivering robot. Its creator, Yuuuki, says it was made partially on an iPad. Most of the festival’s films are available online, but I was glad I saw them on a big screen with an audience. Even if you assume those who showed up were predisposed to like AI-generated movies—I didn’t identify any haters in attendance—keeping a roomful of people engaged is vastly harder than capturing someone’s fleeting attention on YouTube. All 10 films managed to pull that off. Then again, the fact that these were shorts also helped. Even the longest one https://youtu.be/qDsDUE5en0E?si=VRXl4SESAawqa9Kk was only 11 minutes and 35 seconds. AI is capable of outputting realistic humans whose looks and movements jump right over the uncanny valley https://www.fastcompany.com/1663530/did-the-uncanny-valley-kill-disneys-cgi-company , as seen in festival films such as Between Before and After , a story of ex-lovers who reconnect. But AI-generated performances remain pedestrian. Meryl Streep they are not, a fact that would be more glaringly obvious at feature length. As I watched from the back row, I was reminded of the days, decades ago, when I was a regular at animation festivals. Computer-generated shorts were just beginning to pop up as part of the mix. At first, they didn’t aspire to do much more than demo snazzy effects such as a teakettle spinning in 3D space. It wasn’t until 1984 that a software company made a short film called The Adventures of André & Wally B. that was . . . okay, not a gem, but an actual work of entertainment. That company was Pixar. Two years later it released Luxo Jr. , which AI filmmaking may have already passed the André & Wally B. stage. I don’t think it’s had its Luxo Jr. yet. But Runway’s festival left me more convinced that it might—and that it’s most likely to come from an individual or small team, not some corporate media giant. That alone is reason to give the medium more time before concluding how far it could go. 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