Thematic Competition, Grand Prize
The First Honest Day
Nicholay Shestak
Festivals · Festival · Independent
Astana AI Film Festival
A free-to-enter AI film festival in Kazakhstan with a million competition prize pool, a named jury and two competitions.
- Organiser
- Astana AI Film Festival (AAIFF)
- With
- Freedom and Network School; partners include AI & Digital Bridge, Mastercard and Visit Astana
- Held
- First edition
2026
ResultsAstana, Kazakhstan · Results published 3 Oct 2026
Winners
Open Competition, Best Character
It Was Just a Joke
Myrzakhan Zhumakhan
Open Competition, Best Story
The Last Span
Junchao Tian
Open Competition, Best Concept
Pomegranate
Zachary London
Open Competition, Best Visual
What’s the Job?
Jacopo Zanetti
Open Competition, Best Direction
The Fracture
Jacopo Reale
Thematic Competition, second place
SITARA
Abhik Banerjee
Thematic Competition, third place
Looking For Perseida
Ernest Desumbila
Key dates
About this edition
- Brief
- Thematic Competition: The Future Worth Living In. Open Competition: any theme, previously shown work allowed.
- Eligibility
- At least three minutes, with burned-in English subtitles. Generative AI must be integral to the work, not only visual effects or upscaling; all contributors credited and the models and pipeline disclosed. Free to enter.
- Prizes
- Thematic: $450,000 Grand Prize, $200,000 second and $100,000 third. Open: $50,000 each for Best Character, Direction, Visual, Story and Concept. A separate $1,000,000 production fund.
- Jury
- Balaji Srinivasan, Audrey Azoulay, Ma Ping, Wang Hao and Li Long.
Why it matters
Astana offered the year’s largest prize pool for AI-made films, and its rules ask entrants to disclose their models and pipeline and credit every contributor. The organiser counts 8,067 entries from 125 countries and regions. That makes its winners a well-documented sample of where narrative AI filmmaking stood in 2026.
The 2026 edition
An official commission chose the Official Selection, announced on September 15, and a five-person jury chose the winners at the festival in Astana from October 1 to 3. The First Honest Day won the Thematic Competition’s Grand Prize, ahead of SITARA and Looking for Perseida. In the Open Competition, Pomegranate won Best Concept and What’s the Job Best Visual. It Was Just a Joke won Best Character, The Last Span Best Story and Jacopo Reale’s The Fracture Best Direction.
The festival also abbreviates itself as AAIFF, as does the unrelated Austin AI Film Festival. Reports by Trend.az describe it as part of Kazakhstan’s AI & Digital Bridge 2026 forum; the official site does not name the legal entity behind it. 2026 was its first edition, and no 2027 dates have been announced.