The News
This week, Dreams of Violets became one of the biggest filmmaking stories on the table. The 75-minute feature, directed and written by Ash Koosha and produced by Pooya Koosha, is set to screen at the 2026 Tribeca Festival on June 10 in New York.
Here is the part that has everyone talking: the film is being billed as the first feature-length, live-action movie completely generated by AI to be accepted by a major film festival.
Why This Matters
We can argue about taste. We can argue about ethics. We can argue about whether a fully AI-generated movie is cinema or just a tech demo with a press kit.
But we cannot ignore it.
Dreams of Violets is not a fake trailer or a 30-second test. It is a feature. It has a festival slot. It has a real story behind it. It is inspired by Iranian civilian resistance, and Tribeca lists it as a special event.
That changes the conversation from “Can this be done?” to “What do we do with it now?”
The Tool Is Not the Whole Movie
For filmmakers, the lazy take is to say AI is here to replace crews. The scarier take is that some companies will try exactly that.
But the better question is this: what happens when a filmmaker uses AI because the normal path is blocked?
Koosha has said the film was made from outside Iran, where filming this story with real actors and locations could put people at risk. That matters. The tool is part of the story, but it is not the full story.
We should be careful here. Cheap production does not mean good production. Fast does not mean honest. A machine can make images, but it cannot carry moral weight for us. That still falls on the filmmaker.
What We Should Watch Next
The big test is not whether the film exists. It does. The test is how audiences, critics, festivals, and working crews respond after the June 10 screening.
If people reject it, that tells us something. If people connect with it, that tells us something else. Either way, the door is open now.
For us, this is a reminder to stay sharp. Learn the tools. Protect the craft. Fight for people. And never forget that filmmaking is not just making pictures move. It is choosing what those pictures mean.