Tribeca Festival Debuts First Fully AI-Generated Feature Film ‘Dreams of Violets’

The Tribeca Film Festival is set to premiere ‘Dreams of Violets,’ a 75-minute docudrama made entirely with artificial intelligence, marking the first time a fully AI-generated movie has been accepted into a major festival’s official lineup. The film, directed by Iranian-born brothers Ash and Pooya Koosha, will debut on June 10 at the AMC Flat Iron Theatre in New York City.

The movie dramatizes a fictionalized January 2026 massacre of Iranian civilians by regime forces, based on journalistic reports and eyewitness accounts. The Koosha brothers, who left Iran in 2009, say the project would have been impossible without AI tools. Ash Koosha noted that as an exile with no access to Iran, locations, or actors, AI allowed him to create a memorial film for events he could not otherwise depict.

Produced over three months at a cost of just $2,000, the film used AI models to replace actors, sets, and cameras. The brothers leveraged tools like Google Nanobanana for imagery, Kling AI for video generation, Claude AI for language editing, and Google Gemini for research.

‘Dreams of Violets’ is the first release from Fountain 0, a UK-based AI company launched by the Koosha brothers. They position their production pipeline as a solution for indie filmmakers constrained by budgets, though they acknowledge the technology raises concerns in Hollywood about automation’s impact on traditional production.

Tribeca co-founder Jane Rosenthal praised the film’s emotional urgency, stating that the festival has always championed artists who push storytelling boundaries. The Koosha brothers, who previously founded cloud AI firm Claigrid, aim to continue refining their AI production techniques for future films.