Tribeca Festival Sets First Premiere of Fully AI-Generated Film, 'Dreams of Violets'

Dreams of Violets is a 75-minute docudrama that premieres June 10 at the 2026 Tribeca Festival. The film is fully AI-generated and is presented as the first full-length live-action AI film accepted by a major festival. The story is inspired by protests in Tehran in January and follows five Iranians who meet in a Tehran alley before being executed, with events witnessed from a window by Amir, a 10-year-old boy with cerebral palsy. The film reflects clashes between Iranian authorities and civilians, with reported casualties and arrests. Work began after the director read reports of the massacre, and the film was built using multiple AI tools from the director’s home in London.

"The 2026 Tribeca Festival has set the world premiere of "Dreams of Violets," a fully AI-generated film produced by studio Foundation 0 aimed at showcasing Iranian civilian resistance. The film's premiere at Tribeca marks the first full-length, live-action film generated by AI to be accepted by a marquee film festival, according to Foundation 0. The film, which will premiere June 10 during the festival's 25th anniversary, is a 75-minute docudrama inspired by the protests that swept Tehran in January, highlighting five Iranians who meet in a Tehran alley before they're executed, all witnessed from a window by Amir, a 10-year-old boy with cerebral palsy."

"Director Ash Koosha, who is from Tehran, said in a statement that work on the film began shortly after he read reports on the massacre. He wanted to create a human-focused film, he said, but without access to a crew, actors or Iran itself, he opted for AI. The feature-length film cost about $2,000 to make, according to Foundation 0. The project took three months - built entirely using tools such as Kling AI for video generation, Anthropic's Claude AI for language-related editing, Google's Gemini and Nanobanana for research and imagery and Foundation 0's own technology for blocking and frame accuracy - all from Koosha's home in London."

"The film was "not a technological exercise," Koosha said, but a bid to "create a memorial film for an event that happened behind a wall I cannot cross." "I understand that an AI-generated film about people who actually died raises difficult questions," he said in a statement. "I have thought about those questions for every minute of every day I have worked on this film. My answer is that the alternative - s"

Read at Variety