Hell Grind, presented as the first feature film entirely produced on an AI platform, screened at Cannes

Hell Grind, the first feature film produced on Higgsfield AI, screens at Cannes after Kazakh director Aitore Zholdaskali made it in 14 days for under $500k.

Hell Grind is coming to a market screening in Cannes with a notable claim: that of a feature film of approximately ninety-five minutes produced end-to-end on Higgsfield. The film is an action-fantasy tinged with science fiction and heist. Four young street thieves break into a museum; the accidental activation of an artifact sends one of them into the afterlife, and the rest of the gang sets off on a chase through Tibetan temples and feudal Japan to retrieve her.

The project is led by Kazakh director Aitore Zholdaskali and co-written by Adilkhan Yerzhanov, a filmmaker who has previously been part of the Cannes selection. A team of about fifteen professionals based in Almaty completed production in fourteen days, for a budget under five hundred thousand dollars, most of which was dedicated to computation. A comparable feature film in traditional production would cost tens of millions.

The technical details temper the idea of automatic generation. For the first twenty-five minutes, the team produced over sixteen thousand generations to retain a little over two hundred and fifty shots, which highlights the importance of curation and iteration. The film extends an about twenty-minute pilot already available on Higgsfield's streaming platform, where the feature film will subsequently be offered. Director Chuck Russell, known for The Mask, saw part of the footage and has committed to other projects with the company.