The film industry is headed for a moment of massive change, and this was perfectly demonstrated to me at the 2025 Reply AI Film Festival in Venice last week. The ten short films created by the 2025 finalists here showed a tantalizing glimpse of what will soon be possible, thanks to AI.
The impact of AI won't just be about what we can see on the screen. At the round table before the winners were announced, the talk was of movie budgets that were 10 or 20 times smaller than today's, but producing films of equal quality. This could totally change the landscape of filmmaking, perhaps even lowering the financial barrier for entry and democratizing moviemaking in the process.
