Commentary
Bloomberg Opinion's Catherine Thorbecke went to an AI film festival expecting slop, and left surprised by how much humanity emanated from the screen.
FILE PHOTO: Words reading "Artificial intelligence AI", miniature of robot and toy hand are pictured in this illustration taken December 14, 2023. REUTERS/Dado Ruvic/Illustration/File Photo
06 Aug 2026 05:59AM
TOKYO: I went into an AI film festival in Tokyo last week expecting slop, and left surprised by how much humanity emanated from the screen.My favourite was an 11-minute short from the point of view of a child with a camcorder spending a magical summer with his grandparents. He records his cereal, mermaid sightings and fleeting, sun-drenched images of youth.The winner was an animated story about a man in Paris with a facial disfigurement. He hides behind masks but dreams of finding a dance partner. The biggest crowd-pleaser, The Postman, imagined a future in which a trash-sorting robot longs for the human connection it once found delivering handwritten letters as a postal worker.All three films made me feel something, which itself has become a provocative statement. Even suggesting that an AI-generated movie might be good tends to draw indignation from filmmakers and cinephiles who still see the technology as an insult to creativity (it can be), a mass heist of intellectual property (no doubt), or a looming threat to artists’ livelihoods (all true).
