Dreams of Violets brings AI-generated film to Tribeca, sparking debate on future of film-making

AI-Generated Film About Iranian Protest Violence Heads to Tribeca Film Festival

Aaron covers what's exciting and new in the world of home entertainment and streaming TV. Previously, he wrote about entertainment for places like Rotten Tomatoes, Inverse, TheWrap and The Hollywood Reporter. Aaron is also an actor and stay-at-home dad, which means coffee is his friend. Lights, camera ... artificial intelligence? Dreams of Violets, a feature-length movie inspired by the protest violence and massacres that unfolded in Iran in early 2026, is coming to the Tribeca Film Festival on June 10. The movie was directed and produced by brothers Ash and Pooya Koosha under their AI-focused production company, Fountain 0, and every visual featured in the 75-minute docudrama was generated by AI. The inclusion of Dreams of Violets at Tribeca comes amid the US-Israel war on Iran and ongoing tensions in the Middle East. At a time when relatively few filmmakers from the region can tell stories like this on a global stage, the subject matter feels especially timely and likely to spark debate. The questions surrounding films like this shaped nearly every panel and discussion at an AI filmmaking conference I attended this week in Culver City, California, called AI on the Lot. Throughout the event, speakers expressed sustained optimism that AI video tools will expand access to filmmaking for underrepresented creators who have historically faced financial barriers to bringing their projects to life. I saw multiple examples of how AI can enable artists to create visually stunning work at a fraction of the usual cost. Case in point: Dreams of Violets was made in two months for $2,000. At the same time, the film raises concerns about using AI to depict deeply human experiences without the lived perspective or emotional authenticity needed to fully ground the story. The project's inclusion at Tribeca has already sparked heated debate online. Discussion of the film has spread across Reddit, with reactions sharply divided. Some users criticized Tribeca for programming the project, while others praised the Koosha brothers for bypassing traditional studio gatekeepers and the financial barriers that often limit independent productions. Several commenters pointed to the work of Oscar-nominated Iranian filmmaker Jafar Panahi, whose 2025 Palme d'Or-winning film It Was Just an Accident also explored political activism and repression in Iran. For many critics, Panahi's film offered a more grounded, human depiction of the events because he made the film without AI-generated performances or imagery. Panahi is currently facing legal proceedings in Iran on charges of "propaganda against the regime." A representative for Fountain 0 Studios didn't immediately respond to a request for comment. Before making movies, Ash and Pooya Koosha used AI to make music. Ash put out an album in 2018 called Return O. The album featured performances by Yona, an AI pop star Pooya created at Auxuman, a company that developed music, games and virtual worlds all created using AI.

'The CGI would have cost millions. I spent $2,000.' Is Dreams of Violets AI slop - or the future of film-making?

It should have taken years, but Ash Koosha made a drama about Iran's anti-government protests in weeks - and now it's the first AI-made movie to screen at a major film festival. It could transform indie film-making, claims the director Next week a breakthrough 75-minute drama about the brutal crackdown in Iran on anti-government protesters in January will premiere at the Tribeca film festival in New York. It is called Dreams of Violets and is based on journalism, video footage and eyewitness accounts. "I would say 80% of it is a recreation of events that actually happened," says its Iranian-British director Ash Koosha. But Dreams of Violets is a work of fiction, not a documentary: a drama following a group of strangers caught up in the protests, who meet by chance in an alleyway. How on earth has Koosha managed to pull together a drama about the killings in less than six months? The answer, it turns out, is by using artificial intelligence. Every image and character in Dreams of Violets is AI-generated. Koosha says he created the characters by describing their physical appearances, using people he has known in the past as references. It would be too dangerous to base characters on living people in Iran, he says. "Because of the security issue, it would not be safe for the characters to even remotely resemble someone." Where Dreams of Violets is breaking new ground is that it is the first fully-AI live action feature accepted at a major film festival. It's part of a gathering wave: last month AI action-adventure Hell Grind screened at Cannes - though not in the festival's official selection. An all-AI animated feature called Where the Robots Grow was released way back in 2024. Dreams of Violets, however, seems to be the first AI film to be accruing artistic and critical credibility - not that using AI has made things easy, says Koosha. "A lot of the traditional festivals just don't want to touch AI. They don't want to even talk about it. What I've realised is that no one wants to be first." Koosha is speaking to me in a cafe near the Guardian's offices in King's Cross. Born in Iran, he has been based in London for nearly 20 years. His career began in Tehran playing in bands and acting, and he was imprisoned for two weeks in an Iranian maximum-security prison for organising a music festival ("We were playing Arctic Monkeys covers"). After moving to London, he continued to make music. He's also a technology entrepreneur, co-founding an AI start-up called Claigrid with his brother Pooya. In 2018, he developed an AI singer called Yona who wrote and performed her own music. "Back then it was super sci-fi." He has also co-founded a studio, Fountain 0, to produce AI-generated films. What he has never done before, says Koosha, is politics. That changed in January this year, as he watched footage on his social media feeds coming out of Iran, before the internet blackout. "For 72 hours, we saw things that were just horrifying. It was a bloodbath." Some estimates put the death toll at more than 30,000. Something in him snapped. "This made me political. This is where I drew the line. I thought: you know what, I'm going to make the first film about this. It's time to use technology to keep something alive." It took him two-and-a-half months to make the film, working on it in the evenings at home while continuing his day job as CEO of Claigrid. The script was not AI-generated, but he did use the chatbot Claude to improve the language and structure his thoughts. The genius of working with AI, he says, is that at any point a film-maker can change their mind, take the plot in an entirely different direction: "You just open another session. You don't have to worry that you're rewriting. You multiply your imagination until something hits the right spot." He also composed the score and edited the film without the use of AI. For his next AI film project, Koosha plans to create characters using actual people. "Because now you can license real faces." Does that mean the actor is not involved in the film after selling their features? "They can voice act. And they take a share in the financial gain of the film. I think it's going to be a new world of opportunities for people. Especially the face and image licensing." What about the acting, I ask? A Rada-trained actor with 20 years' experience under their belt might protest that they bring more to a film than just a face. "That is a very valid point, and I think there are stories that I would never allow AI to touch, that we still need to do in the theatrical way." The kind of films he'd make with AI, he says, are "impossible movies, a film that requires a $300m budget, and it doesn't happen on this planet." Koosha says that Dreams of Violets would be "100% impossible" to bring to the screen in the traditional way. "If you wanted to do it in CGI, it would cost millions. I spent under $2,000." He also points out the difficulties in raising finance and pre-production. "It would take probably a year or two to get this right. The notion of making films at the speed of news itself is something I'm super interested in." He also sees a role for AI in producing movies that look like massive studio productions at a fraction of the cost - removing the barriers for independent film-makers. "An indie film-maker mind is often a lot more fresh and creative than an industrial film-maker mind. In my view most stories that are told with $100m should be told through the lens of an indie film-maker." AI can democratise the industry, he argues. "I'm thinking about the next Jodorowsky," he says, referring to the psychedelic Chilean film-maker. "How many years do they have to prove themselves to some bourgeois festival to get to a point where they get a $2m budget? I think that a new space will separate from the old space. And these people will start doing interesting things." Critics of AI-generated film dismiss it as soulless slop. But Hollywood directors from Steven Soderbergh to Darren Aronofsky are beginning to engage with AI. Last week, the Jurassic World Rebirth and Rogue One director Gareth Edwards described generative AI as a "genius" tool for film-makers, though Guillermo del Toro said he would "rather die" than use it. Koosha says he's not generally a fan of AI films. "So far, I hate anything made that is made with AI. It disgusts me. I don't want to look at it. It gives me a headache." He also mistrusts some other people on the scene. "They want to make people get used to garbage. I'm somewhere in the middle trying to be the voice of reason. I used AI. I'm an artist. I tried not to use it in a crass way." He adds: "I'm not selling AI. I'm just trying to use a tool to tell a story." Koosha voice-acted all the roles himself for Dreams of Violets then used AI to modify them - to make one sound like a woman in her 20s, another like an older man. Other AI film-makers are using voice actors: "Each team will develop their own method," he says. Will audiences buy into AI characters, I ask? Koosha thinks so. "I'm going to give you a silly example. Do you watch Rick and Morty? Sometimes I go so deep emotionally when Rick is regretful. But Rick doesn't exist. We want Rick to exist because we have the same feelings. Pixar movies make me cry." Koosha is convinced that jobs will be created at Fountain 0. "There are so many areas that are new, that are basically unknown. I guarantee that this company will create at least 200 jobs that didn't exist." The lightning speed of change in AI film-making means that no one knows how it will disrupt film production. I ask Koosha what he thinks the industry will look like in 10 years' time: "Well, I don't think Christopher Nolan will make another $300m movie. Underwriting a $200m to $300m movie will not make sense any more." He paints an egalitarian picture of a boom in mini-studios: "Every film-maker will become the studio." Creatives will be working in newly created jobs sharing in the profits. "So, I see that in the next 10 years there will be a reshuffling of money, hopefully in a better way. AI is going to be a catalyst of that change."

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."