AI-generated feature 'Dreams of Violets' selected for Tribeca Festival

In late May 2026, the Tribeca Festival in New York announced that Dreams of Violets, a 75-minute live-action feature, would have its world premiere on 10 June. Its backers described it as the first feature-length live-action film made entirely with generative AI to be accepted by a major film festival.

The film is credited to the brothers Ash and Pooya Koosha, working under the name Fountain 0. Reports said it took about three months and cost roughly $2,000, using AI tools for video, speech and research. Accounts differ on how much human writing and voice work preceded the AI processing. The story reportedly dramatises the January 2026 protests in Iran.

The selection mattered because it brought AI-made cinema into a prominent festival lineup. Tribeca co-founder Jane Rosenthal was reported to have praised it as AI serving human storytelling, while critics raised concerns about the technology's effect on film jobs and about portraying real events and victims with synthetic imagery. The debate is part of the wider argument over how studios and festivals should treat generative AI.