Tribeca selects "Dreams of Violets," the first entirely AI-generated feature film, for its official selection.

Tribeca Festival selects Dreams of Violets, a $2,000 AI-generated film by Ash Koosha and Fountain 0, marking a historic first for a major film festival.

The Tribeca Festival has selected for its 2026 lineup 'Dreams of Violets', an entirely AI-generated feature film produced by Fountain 0 studio. According to the studio, it is the first live-action film of this nature to be selected by a major festival, and not relegated to the margins usually reserved for such productions.

With a runtime of 75 minutes, this docu-fiction is inspired by the protests that swept through Tehran in January. It follows five Iranians gathered in an alley before their execution, under the gaze of Amir, a ten-year-old boy with cerebral palsy who observes the scene from a window. The narrative refers to the real clashes between Iranian authorities and the population, which reportedly resulted in at least 7,000 deaths and over 50,000 arrests, according to the Human Rights Activists News Agency.

Directed by Ash Koosha, a Tehran native based in London, the film cost approximately 2,000 dollars and took three months to complete. Lacking access to a crew, actors, or the country itself, the director turned to several tools: Kling AI for video, Anthropic's Claude for text work, Google's Gemini and Nanobanana for research and images, and Fountain 0's in-house technology for framing and shot consistency. Koosha sees it not as a technical exercise but as a memorial film, addressing the questions raised by a work generated from real deceased individuals.

The premiere is scheduled for June 10, during an edition that marks the festival's 25th anniversary. In terms of context, the reception of AI films remains cautious: Cannes excluded them from its official competition, only allowing Higgsfield AI's 'Hell Grind' through its film market.