Nono’s Sakura Festival: A Spring Song Trilogy
Winner — Best Music Video, Thilsri International Film Festival 2026 (India)
Finalist — AI London Film Festival 2026 (UK)
Finalist — Seoul International AI Film Festival 2026 (SIAFF), (South Korea)
Finalist — Sweden Film Awards 2026 (Sweden)
Finalist — Stockholm City Film Festival 2026 (Sweden)
Finalist — Luleå International Film Festival 2026 (Sweden)
Semi-Finalist – MEI International Film Festival 2026 (India)
Official Selection — Tokyo Lift-Off Film Festival 2026 (Japan)
Official Selection — Marin County Fair International Festival of Short Film & Video 2026 (USA)
Official Selection — Fescilmar Festival, Poland Session 2026 (Poland)
Official Selection — Short Way International Short Film Festival 2026 (Brazil)
Honorable Mention — Indo Dubai International Film Festival 2026 (UAE)
A 7-minute animated music film celebrating spring, memory, and youth through three iconic Japanese visual novel and game-inspired songs, all performed by Nono.
Set beneath a sky full of drifting cherry blossoms, the film follows a gentle high school girl walking through nostalgic school paths, blooming sakura trees, and quiet moments of emotion.
Blending anime-style visuals, soft cinematic motion, and original human vocals, this piece is both a tribute to 30 years of Japanese game-song culture and a heartfelt springtime musical experience.
This film was selected for the Cinferno “Top 100 AI Filmmakers of 2026” curated showcase.
-
Pai ChenDirector
-
Project Type:Animation, Experimental, Music Video, Short
-
Runtime:6 minutes 18 seconds
-
Completion Date:March 30, 2026
-
Production Budget:100 USD
-
Country of Origin:Taiwan
-
Country of Filming:Taiwan
-
Language:Japanese
-
Shooting Format:Digital Animation / AI-assisted
-
Aspect Ratio:16:9
-
Film Color:Color
-
First-time Filmmaker:Yes
-
Student Project:No
-
Digital Cinema Package:Unavailable
Pai Chen is an independent filmmaker and AI-assisted creator based in Taiwan, and the founder of Studio Nono.
His work explores the intersection of music, emotion, and emerging creative technologies, blending original vocal performance with AI-driven visual storytelling. Rather than focusing solely on technical spectacle, he approaches filmmaking as a deeply personal and expressive act, treating each project as a singular encounter between creator, character, and audience.
Through works such as Nono’s Sakura Festival, he seeks to capture quiet emotional states — hesitation, resolve, nostalgia, and the fragile beauty of moving forward — through minimal dialogue, musical narration, and poetic visual language.
His ongoing body of work spans music films, narrative experiments, and character-driven pieces, forming an evolving creative universe centered on voice, identity, memory, and digital-era storytelling.
In Nono’s Sakura Festival, I wanted to focus on a moment almost too small to be noticed — the quiet shift that occurs just before a person decides to move forward.
The film does not build toward a dramatic turning point. Instead, it remains close to stillness: the pause of a breath, the weight of hesitation, and the fragile space where thought begins to transform into action.
Through a minimal structure of voice, light, and movement, I sought to allow emotion to emerge without being explicitly stated. The character does not explain herself; she simply exists within a passing moment, carried by rhythm, atmosphere, and memory.
Working with AI as a creative medium allowed me to shape this sense of presence gently, where images do not insist, but accompany. The result is not a story of transformation, but the trace of one.
In the end, what remains is something simple: not a resolution, but a quiet permission to take the next step.
