Special event in collaboration with Reply AI Film Festival

The Reply AI Film Festival (AIFF) is an international competition created by Reply and dedicated to short films made with the support of artificial intelligence. It stems from the idea that technology and creativity can evolve together, paving the way for new visual languages.

The 2025 edition chose “Generation of Emotions” as its theme, inviting participants to explore how AI can help generate new forms of emotional expression and transform the way stories are imagined and created. The entries – over 2,500 short films from 67 countries – were evaluated by an international jury of directors, artists and producers, including Gabriele Muccino, Rob Minkoff, Dave Clark, Charlie Fink, Caleb and Shelby Ward, Denise Negri, Filippo Rizzante, Caroline Ingeborn, Paolo Moroni and Guillem Martinez Roura.

The finalists were awarded prizes in Venice, coinciding with the Venice International Film Festival.

The Festival represents the desire to give a voice to the new generations in the field of video, images and audio, creating contests that not only promote innovation but also contribute to building an international observatory on how artificial intelligence is transforming visual imagery and production processes.

The Reply AI Film Festival is now a significant opportunity to promote innovation and talent, offering new authors the chance to engage with emerging technologies, develop advanced skills and imagine more accessible and sustainable creative scenarios.

During the evening, we will screen six short films, followed by a debate led by Massimo Temporelli with Andrea Lommatzsch and Jacopo Reale (Italian directors participating in the Festival) and Filippo Rizzante (CTO Reply).

The evening will conclude with a debate open to the public, who are invited to contribute questions and reflections to enrich the discussion. 

Featured short films:

Carousel
Author: Andes Aloi, director (Argentina)

On a subway train, a man and a woman imagine their relationship, mixing real memories and fantasy. ‘Carousel’ is a visual poem about their love story and its demise, made possible by AI and enriched by underwater scenes and a wide variety of locations.

Clown
Author: Shanshan Jiang, artist and director (Great Britain)

In a surreal mix of live footage and AI-generated images, the film tells the story of a talented clown who loses herself in her quest for public approval. As she changes her habits, appearance and personality to suit the demands of the audience, the boundaries between performance and reality become increasingly blurred.

Corrupt Data Clan
Author: Eric Kervern, artist (France)

In 1993, a revolutionary hip-hop collective was born in Brooklyn, capable of pushing the boundaries of sound and creativity. This compelling documentary celebrates the untold journey of a truly visionary group, thirty years ahead of its time.

Instinct
Author: Marcello Costa Jr., director (Portugal)

Instinct is a short film that shows what happens when primal survival instincts clash with the rules of modern life. It poses a simple but unsettling question: does civilisation really represent progress, or does it deprive us of something essential to our nature?

Love at First Sight
Author: Jacopo Reale, director (Italy)

Made entirely with AI tools, the short film tells the story of an encounter between a young shepherd and a girl who watches him silently from a hill. ‘Love at First Sight’ captures the silent connection between the two and the beauty of shyness.

Not Chosen
Author: Javier Marro, director (Chile)

Not Chosen is an animated short film that tells the story of a small blue puppet with beige horns, rejected by a prize machine and left out. As he wanders the outside world in search of belonging, he finds only indifference and abandonment. Through intimate and silent images, the film explores the quiet resilience of those who are ignored.

The Cinema That Never Was
Author: Mark Wachholz, director (Germany)

A journey through films that were never made – abandoned or never conceived – and the hypothesis of how they could have changed the history of cinema. Thanks to AI tools, it is possible to bring these lost works to life, creating images, music and narratives that recall the aesthetics of classic cinema.

UN RÊVE LIQUIDE
Author: Andrea Lommatzsch, artist (Italy)

A short film in which artificial intelligence played a fundamental role in transforming an idea into a visual narrative, enabling the creation of images, scenes and animations. The result is a visually striking short film that would not have been possible without the help of artificial intelligence or a significant budget.