Tribeca Film Festival co-founder Jane Rosenthal is defending the fest’s decision to premiere “Dreams of Violets,” a fully AI-generated film about the Iranian civilian resistance.
“I think people need to read the director’s [Ash Koosha’s] statement,” Rosenthal told Variety at the festival’s 25th anniversary cocktail reception in lower Manhattan Monday night. “The director is Iranian — his family, relatives and friends are there and it’s the only way in a two month period he could tell his story, his way.”
The film, which will premiere June 10, marks the first full-length, live-action film generated by AI to be accepted by a major film festival, a decision that has sparked some backlash online.
But Rosenthal doubled down on its premiere. “If somebody wrote a song about it, you wouldn’t say anything, if somebody wrote a poem about it, you wouldn’t say anything, if somebody wanted to dance about it, you wouldn’t say anything,” she said. “So [Koosha] did it his way, so I think you have to look at it in that context.”
The 75-minute docudrama is inspired by the protests that swept Tehran in January, highlighting five Iranians who meet in a Tehran alley before they’re executed, all witnessed from a window by Amir, a 10-year-old boy with cerebral palsy. The clashes reflect the real-world protests between Iranian authorities and civilians, which left at least 7,000 people dead and more than 50,000 people arrested, according to the Human Rights Activists News Agency.
