AI Film Festival Japan

Why it matters

AIFJ is Japan’s main international AI film festival and links filmmakers to Japanese industry programmes. Its 2026 edition added an AI film-score category, in which entrants compose music for a supplied clip, treating sound as a craft of its own rather than a by-product of video generation.

Editions

The first edition’s winners were published on November 2, 2025. They include What Remains, WALLED DREAMS, Last Call Before A.G.I, The Cinema That Never Was, Andy’s Days #42 and the Special Jury Award winner El día que me quieras. The Best AI Narrative winner, Chairman by STUDIO 011, has no public release this journal could find. At the spring 2026 LOOP 2126 Prelude event, What is Real? by Kennex Ma won the Grand Prix in the free-theme category. The organiser’s spring page does not say on which day the Grand Prix was announced; the event dates it here.

The second edition ran at Tokyo Innovation Base from October 31 to November 2, 2026, with the awards ceremony on November 1. The organiser announced an official selection of 68 films and 21 finalists from more than 730 entries; A Face Only a Mother Could Love is in the official selection. The 2026 winners had not been published when this record was checked. Kennex Ma, a spring Grand Prix winner, sits on the 2026 jury. A different film called The Well, by Ryeongmi Jo, is in the 2026 selection; it is not The Well in this collection.