July 16 // Midtowner Productions, 152 East Harlem // NYC
East Harlem. Loud block. Loud history.
Jazz spilled out of these windows. Salsa rewired the sidewalks. Hip-hop got born a few stops uptown and graffiti turned the walls into galleries before anyone called them that. Every wave of art that mattered in this city started with somebody nobody invited. So yeah. This is exactly where new AI filmmakers belong.
We want the freaks. The basement auteurs. The kids who taught themselves Comfy at 3 a.m. The painters who picked up a model and never looked back. The ad refugees, the music video heads, the meme-poets, the world-builders, the ones making stuff that doesn't fit anywhere yet.
Bring us:
narratives with a pulse
animation, hand-stitched or hallucinated
music videos, fake commercials, surreal infomercials
experimental shorts that don't apologize
sci-fi worlds that feel lived in
quiet dramas. loud comedies. impossible documentaries.
If it has a point of view and AI is anywhere in the pipeline, we want it on our screen.
Tool stack? Doesn't matter. Runway. Sora. Veo. Kling. Luma. Pika. Midjourney. Stable Diffusion. ComfyUI. Wan. Hailuo. Open-source. Custom rigs. Cameras. Crayons. Whatever. Mix it, break it, layer it. We care about the result and the brain behind it. Not the logo.
Bring work that couldn't exist two years ago. Bring work that has an artist behind the prompt.

THE NIGHT
Doors crack open early.
Small room on purpose // closer to a loft party than a theater. Films roll in blocks of three or four, then we yank the creator on stage for a quick honest conversation. No moderator. No cue cards. No "and how did you find your voice as a storyteller." Just how'd you make it, what broke, what stayed.
Midway: a break. The room mixes. By the time awards land, you know names.
You leave with: collaborators. Ideas. A sharper read on where this thing is going. Maybe a film stuck in your head for a week.

Awards & Prizes

THE AWARDS
Built for the AI era. Every prize goes to a person. Not a file.

Best AI Film
Top of the night. The work that proves what this medium can actually do.

Best AI Director
Strongest vision behind the film.

Best AI Screenplay
Sharpest writing, cleanest story.

Best AI Cinematography
Command of the image, frame after frame.

Best AI Editor
Rhythm, pacing, the cuts that hold it together.

Best AI Sound & Music
Score, design, audio that defines the film.

Best AI Animation
Strongest animated or fully generative work.

Best AI Hybrid Film
Cleanest blend of live-action and generative craft.

Best AI Solo Filmmaker
One person. Start to finish. No hiding.

Best AI Workflow
Most original pipeline or self-built rig.

Best AI Newcomer
First-time filmmaker who shows up fully formed.

Best AI Short-Short
Strongest film under three minutes.

Best Music AI

Rules & Terms

RULES (read them)
Runtime: 30 seconds to 25 minutes. Short-shorts welcome. We mean it.
Submit your film + a short process log: tools, stages, what you made vs. what you generated. Not policing. Just on the record.
Works-in-progress eligible for everything except Best AI Film. Tag clearly.
All forms welcome: narrative, animation, music video, ad spec, doc, abstract, weird-internet-stuff that doesn't have a name yet.
You hold the rights to everything in your film, including training data that wasn't licensed or public domain. Not sure? Ask before you submit.
No deepfakes of real people without written consent. No exceptions.
Team film? List every contributor, human and tool. Hidden collaborators = pulled work.
One submission per creator/team per cycle.
Winning = we screen your film on July 16 and use a clip in our recap reel. That's it. You keep the rest.