Last week, the Tribeca Film Festival announced that, at this year’s edition of the event, it will screen a documentary film about the struggles of Iranians living under the oppressive regime in their country.
But this isn't just another feature about struggle and survival amid political turmoil. The documentary is the first feature-length production entirely created using AI to be showcased at a major film festival.
Dreams of Violets is a 75-minute docudrama inspired by real events that happened earlier this year in protests in Tehran. Thanks to AI, was generated on a budget of just $2,000 (approximately £1,500 / AU$2,800), involving no actors or a single set being built.
Above: Dreams of Violets trailer
In a statement, director Ash Koosha admitted that he would have preferred to make the film with more traditional methods. But, as an Iranian in exile, the director said that AI was the only way that he could tell the story.
"The film exists because the dead deserve to be witnessed and because the families inside Iran, who cannot speak, deserve someone outside who refuses to forget," the director wrote. "I am not certain that this is the right form for this story. I am certain that this story needed a form, and this is the form that was available to me."
AI technology is making it possible to create works based in regions where travel is dangerous. But, the project's inclusion in the film festival is a controversial one.
The inclusion of a fully AI-generated film at a major film festival could mark a monumental turning point in filmmaking: one that sets off a steady slide toward widespread public acceptance of fully AI-generated movies and, subsequently, the vast majority of production companies cashing in on the budget-saving benefits of using the technology instead of real people and locations.
If you watch the Dreams of Violets trailer, you can clearly tell that the movie is an AI creation, with some characteristic jerky movements and the sometimes jarring stares of people who were conjured up by an algorithm.
However, to my eye, it isn't far off from passing for real live action, which is frightening to think about, considering that the gold rush to develop AI film generation platforms capable of creating realistic footage only began a couple of years ago, spearheaded by the release of tools such as OpenAI’s Sora in 2024 – which was recently shut down.
If, after just two or so years, AI is now advanced enough to create a documentary deemed worthy of screening at a major film festival, are we just a few years away from completely AI-generated films hitting the big screens in our local cinemas too?
Perhaps so. Only recently, Disney laid off some 1,000 staff members in what it claimed was a move toward a “culture of efficiency."
And, even more recently, esteemed director Martin Scorsese publicly embraced AI, becoming an advisor to an AI movie-generation tool startup.
Will we ever reach a point where mainstream cinema completely does away with real humans and locations appearing on screen? I don't think so.
For that to happen, AI tools still need a lot more refinement, and I think there will always be an audience and production companies that will only ever want to immerse themselves in human cinematography, regardless of whether AI films become the norm in a not-so-distant dystopian future.
But with Dreams of Violets already proving just how close AI tools are to replacing even the most skilled camera operators, actors, and editors, and the Tribeca Film Festival redefining what is accepted as cinematography, I’m absolutely certain that, as a 30-year-old writing this, fully generated AI movies could become the norm within my lifetime, more likely within the next couple of decades.
The 25th Tribeca Film Festival is set to run 03-14 June in New York City, with Dreams of Violets premiering on June 10.
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