i went to an ai film festival

words by Matthew Donlan

It's 6pm. Doors open in thirty minutes. The films start at 7. I don't remember a promise of canapés so decide to grab a slice of pizza to go. The army of red and white Swans fans queuing out the door make me change plans - Oporto large chips, take-away. They give me a small. No time to argue, a family of five is bickering over the various meal deals and who will realistically eat what.

I get to the light rail with my small Oporto cup already empty. There's no bin in sight. Will I need to take my crumpled brown bag into the venue?

In the carriage I check Google Maps for the exact venue. Shit. It's telling me I'll be there at 6:27pm. I hurried too much now I'm going to be early. I was aiming for that sweet spot where I'd only need to awkwardly kill time for 10-15 minutes (accounting for a bathroom pit stop, ticket scanning and drink purchase), not the full thirty.

I get off one stop early and walk the rest of the way. Then I do a lap around the block looking for a bin. Then I get to the venue and swerve to the bathroom. I check my watch. 3:08pm?! The hands aren't ticking. The date is stuck on the 2nd. I've been frozen in time at the AI film festival!!!

***

The Omni 1.5 'Hyperphantasia' International AI Film Festival presented by Envato was held in The Collider managed by Flex by ISPT on Friday 3 July 2026. According to Spice Magazine, the venue was once the showroom for the Australian Gaslight Company; a fact which writes its own punchline. It's now been gentrified by tech people who think covering every surface in white marble, white carpet or white leather makes it modern, smooth and futuristic. It actually makes it a tempting victim for me to 'accidentally' spill my complimentary red wine. I didn't. That would be a waste of cheap wine. You want to save that drama for the expensive stuff.

Another downside from hosting your event in a showroom designed by Patrick Bateman is that it’s not designed to be a cinema. The flat seating arrangement and low-hanging curved LED screen meant that I (and anyone not in the front two rows) had no chance of reading the subtitles. The French I learnt in high school over a decade ago got me through one, a few had no dialogue which saved us from crooked necks, but the rest not in English suffered from speculation and a reliance on visual storytelling. The one thing I did see at the start of the showcase was the QuickTime Player bar which said the package would run for 1 hour 13 minutes.

A submission requirement of the festival was that films needed to be made with 90% or more generative AI. Over 3,000 entries were received from around the world, and 13 were screened on the night. These films had been awarded various prizes by the jury panel, led by Alex Proyas (I, Robot; Knowing; Dark City). We were told in the introduction that these films were at the cutting edge of filmmaking. We were told that AI had let these filmmakers make films that otherwise wouldn’t be possible. We were told to remember that there were still humans behind these tools, guiding the prompts and adjusting the visuals.

With my mind adequately primed to be amazed, I freed up both hands to take notes by quickly finishing my wine. I’d like to present the short summaries I wrote for each film before going into my impressions. See if you can spot at which film the wine really hit the brain:

1. A woman dances by the beach and a black crow gets eaten by a snake as she dies
2. Two people talking in a forest (missed subtitles)
3. Old style news reel for a nuclear bomb test
4. A pigeon and a cat become friends in a forest
5. Man rides a pink balloon pig
6. Two German girls fight in a school hall
7. A noir film about a man taking the pain from cartoons
8. French fish survives under a dripping tap
9. No fucking clue...
10. Strangers become friends at a funeral
11. Classic orange and blue AI. I dunno, something about mundane office life and appreciating life
12. Spider and frog in forest
13. Masked man finds love

What’s this strange feeling in my feet? Oh no! I’m barefoot in my shoes because my socks have truly been knocked off by those films! I see it now…

…is what I would have said if RFK Jr’s brain worm had relocated to my skull.

As the screening went on, my patience waned. What are we doing here? What’s going on? Is this the goal now?

This programme was missing everything they promised. If this was cutting edge, I wouldn’t be concerned about getting sliced. Voice performances were lifeless and monotone, stories uninspiring and incoherent, art styles washed out and bland. It became an eyesore, a pain to sit through, a regret for deciding to spend my Friday night here.

The thing that kept confusing me was the trend to go for hyper-realistic visuals. Watching these uncanny valley AI faces gave me the same feeling as watching The Polar Express. It’s not quite human but really wants to be, creating an unsettling experience that almost led to pity. Nothing in these AI films looked real. Everything had a glow to it, a smoothness that made it too perfect to be authentic. AI doesn’t understand textures, light and how the two interact in a 3D space. Nothing felt motivated or adventurous. The camera just presented the necessary information as prompted, to tell the story as prompted. The only mistakes that emerged were technical limitations like asynchronous dialogue to lip movements and a collapsing art style. It all just felt like a demo reel for a product that wasn’t tested.

The night didn’t feel like a celebration of filmmakers, it felt like a side room to a tech conference. There was no passion in the delivery of the night. There was no passion in the films. There was no passion in the speakers. There was no passion left in me.

I left as quickly as I could. I needed to be back in the real world. I needed to be around real people. I hoped the cold wind would wake me from the nightmare. Maybe another glass of red wine would do the trick? Two hours at the pub, surrounded by the few Sydneysiders who didn’t get a ticket to the AFL, and I was finally prepared to go home.

As I was standing on the platform waiting for my train late that night, I glanced at my watch again. 3:09pm. One minute had passed. What a comforting thought; I only lost one minute of my life to the AI film festival.  

Pick of the Week
This week I recommend you go watch something real with as big of an audience as you can. Whether it's The Odyssey, the World Cup final, a mystery screening or Pink Flamingo, just go watch something made by real people, surrounded by real people. :)

New Releases - Thursday 16 July

• The Odyssey (Christopher Nolan)
• Animal Farm (Andy Serkis)