World AI Film Festival: “There is no emotion in AI”

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The World AI Film Festival fielded new and established storytelling voices but the jury is out on whether AI can capture the human spirit of cinema

To some people, even celebrating the role of AI in content creation is a tone-deaf and artless enterprise, but filmmakers participating in the World AI Film Festival (WAIFF) were proud of being at the forefront of a creative revolution.

“We used to say ‘before and after Christ’. Now we’ll say ‘before and after AI’,” veteran French director Claude LeLouch said at the event’s second edition in Cannes.

The festival took place in the same Palais venue which just a few weeks from now will host the Cannes Film Festival. While Cannes has outlawed the technology as a principal authoring tool, WAIFF competition entries must include use of at least three generative AI tools (including one for image creation).

“What we are witnessing here is the equivalent of the Lumière brothers’ The Arrival of a Train at La Ciotat,” said musician Jean-Michel Jarre, acting as festival ambassador. “Cannes Film Festival began modestly 79 years ago. WAIFF will take far less time to become a major global reference.”

Entries were overwhelmingly short, typically 10 minutes long, in categories that ranged from advertising to fantasy and ‘emotion’. However, average duration has ticked up considerably on a year ago when films of one minute were permitted with predictions that feature length work will be submitted next year.

As it was, the winner of the ‘feature’ (long-form) award was a 4 x 52 minute docu-series Napoléon III, Le prix de l’audace, already aired on Canal+ and TV5 Quebec.

“Fictional AI features aren’t quite ready yet, but hybrid documentaries with interviews and AI‑generated historical reconstructions are very strong,” said WAIFF Artistic Director, Julien Raout. “Next year we’ll have full AI fiction features over an hour long.”

Searching for soul

Jury members were looking for originality in judging the 54 official competition entries (selected from 7000 submissions).

“Whether AI is used or not the most important thing to me is story,” said Nam Na-young, the South Korean editor of Squid Game. “Then I look for details in the scene, such as lighting and I also look for the editing; how one scene goes to the next, how it links and changes the story.”

She said entries were “not as diverse in terms of genre” as she expected. “Narrative wise they aren’t very strong. The more experimental ones are stronger.”

French actor Elsa Zylberstein, another festival juror, was searching for “soul” in AI generated work and found this wanting. “To be an actor is unique in the way you are exposing your soul and from what I have seen so far there is no emotion in AI.”

Academy Award winning documentarian Ruby Yang thought that the more original stories were being made as animations rather than hybrid films that augment live action with AI.

“I can spot something that's used a piece of IP from somewhere else in live action easier than I can in animation,” she said. “I see slower paced stories with more humanity coming from Europe and faster paced science fiction and action films from Asia.”

By definition, all the films in competition were hybrid in the sense that they are made by humans using AI. There were fewer examples of work which blended camera originated live action with AI‑generated visuals “because it is easier and cheaper to use full AI,” Raout said.

One of them, RendAI-vous, directed by Marius Doicov, won the Best Youth Film. Another film from Brazil featured actors transformed into wolf‑like creatures, something that used to be extremely expensive with VFX, now achievable with AI.

The Best Film of the overall competition was awarded to Costa Verde, a 12-minute personal story about his Corsican childhood from writer-director Léo Cannone produced by the UK’s New Forest Films.

“Just because we can do something doesn’t mean that we should,” noted Elena Lyubarskaya, founder of Berlin-based AI producer The Difference Machine. “Before AI we had physical constraints like not being able to shoot a scene at night, or being denied access to a location, or simply lack of budget. Solving these problems is where all the best ideas came from.

“Now I can generate an octopus running around a city but it’s just slop if there’s no story. I think we will have to learn to artificially put constraints on ourselves.”

Director Mathieu Kassovitz echoed this sentiment. “The only limit is my taste,” he said. “I feed the machine with my inspiration, and I must get back something that feels like what I’d get from a human team.

“Right now AI is like a wild horse in a stable. We don’t know how to tame it yet, but we can see it’s an exceptional beast.”

AI exists, for good or ill, so let’s explore it

Established filmmakers like Kassovitz were keen to push AI into sacrosanct areas of performance, cinematography and production design.

Claude Lelouch talked about embarking on his 52^nd feature using AI.

“My last films didn’t do very well. Since I’m struggling to find money, I’m turning to AI,” he candidly admitted.

He has been learning to use it for six months. “I asked myself how is it possible that the greatest filmmakers in the world are being overtaken? They’re being overtaken in the sense that soon there will be financial limits — or even limits of imagination. AI is a camera that gives you images even before you’ve filmed anything. It will change cinema.”

Director and screenwriter Nathalie Marsac described a sequence in her upcoming English-language feature A Beautiful Journey involving tiger sharks and a mermaid—initially planned as a shoot in the Bahamas.

“A year ago, VFX studios told me those scenes would cost hundreds of thousands of Euros. We were facing weather constraints… there was too much uncertainty. Suddenly, with AI I can make something that wasn’t possible before.”

Actor, writer and director Agnès Jaoui, whose L'Objet du délit is set to be premiered at Cannes Film Festival, said she felt “terrorised by AI, and all the fantasies it represents,” which is partly why she accepted the invitation to sit as President of the WAIFF Jury.

“Whether we like it or not, AI exists and we might as well go and see what it is exactly, rather than being overwhelmed by our fears and rumours,” Jaoui said.

She may still be in two minds having seen the results. While directors can ostensibly auteur their vision to screen solely using AI on a fraction of conventional budgets, actors and below the line crafts may feel a chill.

Zylberstein insisted that actors would be protected. “Only an actor like Robert De Niro, Meryl Streep, Tom Hanks or Gena Rowlands can evoke genuine emotion. AI cannot copy this.”

LeLouch, who is also the festival’s honorary president, expressed reservations believing AI would never “replace the tears or the smile of actors, or their eyes. Because truth, for me, exists in the eyes. That’s why I love cinema.”

Yet the tech is advancing at pace. The AI‑generated characters in last year’s entries “looked wooden,” according to Raout. “Now you can feel emotion with micro‑expressions, proper lip‑sync and believable faces.”

“There’s no comparison (year on year). The tools have evolved faster than any technology we’ve ever seen in video creation. Last year’s best films wouldn’t make the official selection of films this year.”

Filmmakers take copyright into their own hands

Caution about infringing copyright was front of mind for many filmmakers present.

Japanese producer Taiki Sakurai said, “Many videos on YouTube are violating copyright but there’s also a grey zone which is widening as people get more and more forgiving about what is illegal.”

French artist Anne Horel, whose work ‘La Tisseuse d’Ombres’ won the Press Film Award, trains AI tools on her own digital work, partly to avoid infringement, partly to create something unique.

“Some filmmakers are creating their own servers to build their own IP,” reported Academy Award winning documentarian and juror Ruby Yang. “Even though this is more expensive it means they avoid the potential trouble with open source models.”

Lyubarskaya worried that being fully transparent about the prompts in her work would expose her own IP.

“There must be a tool we can develop where you can show your workflow to clients that will verify that no Spider-Man or any other IP has been touched without revealing your own creative ingredients.”

WAIFF grows internationally

The festival format is licensed to partners in Korea, Japan, Brazil and China which held local events this year.  Those will be repeated in the year ahead joined by one in Istanbul in November with new locations planned for India, Vietnam, Canada (Vancouver) and Argentina.

“The best five AI films from each country automatically enters the official competition in Cannes so partner countries have a greater chance of winning awards,” he explained.

Films from US creators were, however, thin on the ground with no noticeable Hollywood presence at the festival. “Hollywood studios are scared,” said WAIFF founder Marco Landi. “They haven’t understood that going against this wave is dangerous. They should embrace AI and help the evolution.”

He drew parallels with Kodak’s failure to adapt to digital photography and Nokia’s collapse in the smartphone era; “If you resist, you disappear.”

An edition of WAIFF launching in Los Angeles this October could change that.

When WAIFF returns next April it will include a new competition category for gaming, VR, and AR “exploring how AI is used in immersive technologies,” Raout said.

Launching a ‘Netflix of AI’

Organisers are also planning to launch an online distribution platform for AI-generated content, dubbed a ‘Netflix for AI films’.

It could partner in the venture with SHAIKE, a Marseille-based production agency that already operates an AI content streaming platform boasting 1000+ titles.

“The goal is for creators to upload their films to our platform, participate in festivals through our network, and receive support from promotion, festival exposure and media coverage,” confirmed SHAIKE founder Jeremy Angelier. “After the festival run, we become a distribution channel, providing continued visibility and access to audiences.”

There’s a growing feeling that AI filmmakers should be renumerated for their work. AI filmmaking is not necessarily cheap with creators buying tokens from AI model makers.

“Platforms should contribute financially,” Raout said. “Right now, creators pay the platforms to make films, while the platforms make huge profits. Our sponsors (AI editing tool Capcut and GenAI model MiniMax) support visibility for creators, but we want money to flow back to filmmakers. Our future ‘AI Netflix’ could help monetise their work, but platforms should also pay into the ecosystem.”

As to whether audiences want AI content, Raout was in no doubt. “Young people are bored with low‑effort AI fakes. They want real creators using AI as a tool to tell meaningful stories. They want new voices with new ideas, not the same stories recycled by big production companies.”