Dreams of Violets becomes first fully AI-generated film to premiere at major festival

An All AI-Generated Film Is Coming to Tribeca and It's Sure to Raise Eyebrows

Hear Rivers Cuomo Cover Outkast, Dolly Parton, Whitney Houston, and Nirvana The prospect of an entirely AI-generated film opening at the Tribeca film fest is sure to raise eyebrows, but Dreams of Violets may become a bigger talking point than just the ethics of AI. The movie, which will premiere June 10 at the fest, dramatizes the plights of Iranian civilians weeks before the United States and Israel invaded the country this year. Filmmaker Ash Koosha, who is from Tehran but left Iran in 2009, made the 75-minute film for around $2,000 using various AI services for video generation, language editing, research, and imagery, according to Variety. Koosha produced the film with his brother, Pooya. "I understand that an AI-generated film about people who actually died raises difficult questions," Koosha 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 -- silence, forgetting, the regime's preferred outcome -- is worse. 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." A trailer for the film shows a boy in a wheelchair, Amir, who has cerebral palsy, as a family member tells him violets grow in the dark. Meanwhile, unrest is stirring outside as people gather on motorcycles. A separate story follows a woman whose family asks her to stop going out. And then there's a man falling from a building, smoke bombs, and an army quelling protesters. Ultimately, it centers on five people who are to be executed in an alley as Amir watches. The signs of AI exist in the smudged backgrounds of the shots, but the 83-seconds makes it seem as though Koosha, who spent three months developing and generating the picture, has created a realistic-looking film. The story centers around protests that broke out in January. At least 7,000 people died, according to the Human Rights Activists News Agency, while more than 50,000 were arrested. Jane Rosenthal, who cofounded Tribeca, sees the film as "a powerful example of how emerging technologies like AI can be used not simply as tools of innovation, but as vehicles for deeply human storytelling." AI has opened up ethical questions in Hollywood, as Val Kilmer was recently brought back to life digitally in As Deep as the Grave, and the Academy has added new restrictions to how AI is used in movies that get nominated for the Oscars.

Tribeca to Premiere Fully AI-Generated Iranian Resistance Movie 'Dreams of Violets'

The fully AI-generated feature film Dreams of Violets from directors and producers Ash and Pooya Koosha has been officially programmed into the Tribeca Film Festival for a world premiere. The artificial intelligence-generated movie will debut on June 10 at the AMC Flat Iron Theatre in New York City. "The Tribeca Festival has long championed artists who push the boundaries of storytelling and explore new creative frontiers. Dreams of Violets from first-time filmmakers Ash and Pooya Koosha is a powerful example of how emerging technologies like AI can be used not simply as tools of innovation, but as vehicles for deeply human storytelling," Jane Rosenthal, Tribeca Festival co-founder, told The Hollywood Reporter in a statement. "At this time in history when both artificial intelligence and Iran are central to global conversation, this film offers audiences a rare and intimate perspective into a conflict many have not been able to fully see or understand. What moved us was not just the technological achievement, but the emotional immediacy and urgency of the story itself," Rosenthal added. Hell Grind, a 95-minute AI-generated demon movie, recently screened in Cannes, but as a side event during the event's film market, not in the prestigious festival's official program. The Koosha brothers and Tribeca are touting Dreams of Violets as the first full-length, AI-generated movie to be accepted into a major film festival as part of the official lineup. The 75-minute live action film was made over three months at a cost of $2,000, with actors, sets and cameras replaced by AI models in its production. Ash Koosha in a director's statement said the fictional dramatization of a January 2026 massacre of Iranian civilians by Iranian regime forces could not have been made without AI tools. "I want to be honest about why I made it the way I did. It was not a technological exercise. I would have preferred to make this film with a crew, with actors, with the dignity of a full production. That was not available to me. I am one person, in exile, with no access to Iran, no access to the locations, no access to the people. The AI pipeline made it possible to do what would otherwise have been impossible: to create a memorial film for an event that happened behind a wall I cannot cross," Koosha wrote. A synopsis of the film from the producers reads: "Tehran, January 2026. Dreams of Violets is a 75-minute docudrama feature inspired by real events from 47 years of Iranian civilian resistance. Through the eyes of five strangers, it brings protest footage to life with raw immediacy. At dawn, as Iranian forces execute wounded protesters, a violent soldier discovers the five hiding in a dead-end alley. Above them, Amir, a child in a wheelchair, watches from a window and decides to act." The Koosha brothers were born in Iran and left the country in 2009. They're also no strangers to AI technology, having founded Claigrid, a cloud AI personalization company with former NBC Cable president Tom Rogers as its executive chairman. Dreams of Violets is the first movie from Fountain 0, a new AI company launched to produce full-length AI generated films and TV series. To make the Tribeca festival title, the Pooya brothers used AI software tools like Google Nanobanana for imagery and core frames, and Kling AI for video generation from frames. Additionally, Claude AI was used for language related editing and Google Gemini helped with researching the project. Having completed their first feature, the Pooya brothers now see their AI-generated movie model developed via UK-based Fountain 0 as production ready for indie filmmakers, even if the demise of Hollywood due to automated AI tools has been predicted. Ash Pooya, who is based in London, UK added in a statement: "This will understandably bring chills down the spine of many in Hollywood. However, for the many independent filmmakers, and would be independent filmmakers, whose biggest barrier is access to money to make their films, Fountian 0 technology solves for the financial barriers they face. As a first time film creator, there is no way I could have brought this film to fruition without what our AI tools enabled me to do. Moreover, we will actively seek top writer and director talent whose creativity can be harnessed to produce great movies without their imaginations and visions facing any financial constraints." For Dreams of Violets, every image and person in the film is AI generated, but the dramatizations are based on journalistic reports, photographs and eyewitness accounts from which AI video models were used. Pooya Koosha, the Menlo Park, California-based co-founder of Fountain 0 and a producer on Dreams of Violets, added with his own statement: "Having been deeply involved for a number of years in how AI could be utilized and tamed at the highest and most sophisticated levels, I realized our video production techniques were way ahead of the rest of the marketplace. I also realized that our ability for each subsequent film to improve on our AI production techniques is an enormous opportunity for Fountain 0 to exploit."