METACANNES NEXT // AI CINEMA : BLOCK 4
BIRD STUCK IN A PLANE’S ENGINE
A spoken word AI poem crossing experimental video art with gen-AI. This film is dedicated to everyone who has been forced to flee their homes. According to UNHCR, we are now witnessing the highest levels of displacement on record with over 120 million people displaced globally.
“I am a bird stuck in a plane’s engine. Still alive. Still flying. But not on my own wings…”
This AI short was created entirely with Runway & Runway Frames.
Music & sound design – Udio Music, ElevenLabs
WARNING: The film contains flashing images, rapid transitions, which some may find distrustful. Viewer discretion is advised.
DIRECTOR: Kirill Karnovich-Valua
LANGUAGE: English
RUNTIME: 5:00
BLOOM
In this artsy and poetic narrative, we follow Ronald, a new father, as he grapples with absence while his son grows up. Amidst his absence, a remarkable story unfolds – a story of a resilient mother, a tough and beautiful young woman who becomes the unwavering warrior for her child. With an abstract, imperfect aesthetic that evokes the feeling of a living artwork, the film captures the essence of growth, resilience, and the quiet, powerful love that endures, painting a vivid portrait of a family’s journey through time and distance.
DIRECTOR: Julie Wieland
AI-generated music with SUNO by Julie Wieland
LANGUAGE: English
RUNTIME: 1:25
HERE WE ARE
Here We Are invites us into the world of Kamila Xi — a figure who exists at the edges of our understanding, speaking words that hum with something true and unsettling. She reflects on the quiet machinery of society, the patterns we follow without question, and the comfort of what’s deemed “right.” Kamila’s words are personal, yet somehow universal, as if she’s speaking from a place we all know but don’t often visit.
The film drifts through scenes like fragments of memory, part dream, part reality—images slipping by, sometimes clear, sometimes dissolving like thoughts we can’t quite hold onto. Kamila is there, but she’s also not; she’s herself, but maybe she’s all of us. Nothing is stable, and yet everything feels intentional, as if her world is holding up a fractured mirror to our own.
Inspired by Albert Camus’ The Fall, with a pulse of Mr. Robot and the dark allure of Cyberpunk 2077, Here We Are isn’t here to explain itself. It’s here to unsettle, to leave us asking: are we living, or just sleepwalking through someone else’s design?
DIRECTOR: Elena Savlokhova
LANGUAGE: English
RUNTIME: 3:56
MIND MUTE
Imagine a world where every thought becomes reality instantly. What would it be like?
DIRECTOR: Saadettin Konukseven
WRITERS: Ece Berktav Celik, Cagri Celik
LANGUAGE: English
RUNTIME: 1:54
SUMARSÓLSTÖÐUR
In a world where art and reality collide, Miho’s vivid dreams reveal the cosmic force of the Architecture, uniting her with artists across the globe in a desperate battle to heal the universe.
Miho, a Japanese art researcher, begins experiencing vivid dreams that draw her into another dimension, linking her present reality to the trauma of Hiroshima and environmental concerns. She discovers an ancient force called the Architecture, responsible for guiding planetary evolution, that has been disrupted by dark forces.
Artists worldwide, connected to beings called Synesthetes, start experiencing the same dreams and join a cosmic battle to repair the universe. In a final performance, they attempt to heal the cosmic rift, channeling their creativity to reshape reality itself.
The line between dream and reality continues to fade, leaving everyone questioning: is the story real, or merely a fantastical illusion? One thing is certain—after this journey, nothing will ever be the same again.
DIRECTOR: Amélie Ravalec
WRITER: Vincent Ravalec
PRODUCER: Circle Time Studio
LANGUAGE: English, French, Japanese, English subtitles
RUNTIME: 30:00
DANCE OF THE NAIN ROUGE
The Dance of the Nain Rouge” is an experimental decolonial Detroit demonology deepfake dream dance documentary, based on the legend of the Nain Rouge (“Red Dwarf”) of Detroit. According to folklore and urban legend, the Nain Rouge is a supernatural shape-shifting native being who was brutally attacked by xenophobic colonists and has since been seen dancing as an omen of successful rebellions by the oppressed, having reportedly been seen before events such as the victory of Chief Pontiac at the Battle of Bloody Run in 1763 and the 1967 Detroit Rebellion against racism and police brutality. Besides short stature and redness, the Nain Rouge is known for dance, metamorphosis, and cross-species collaboration, having according to “Myths and Legends of Our Own Lands” (1896) “directed the dance of black cats” and “had power to change shape.”
The video, soundtrack, and voiceover are all created with custom artificial intelligence systems, programmed and trained on a hacked-up second-hand Macbook laptop to minimize environmental destruction and maximize class warfare.
The video is based on an AI trained on Victorian era public domain photos of spiritualists and factory workers, 20th century dance, science fiction, and horror film stills, as well as microscopic images of red blood cells and telescopic images of red dwarf stars. The soundtrack is created in part from an AI trained on stethoscopic recordings of human, carnivorous plant, and fungus organs, and also radio waves from space. The narration is a prose poem written by an AI programmed to start from the first line of “The Nain Rouge” from “Myths and Legends of Our Own Land” (1896), end with the last line of “The Nain Rouge” from “Legends of Le Detroit” (1884), and the text in between is based on other contemporary “Red” texts: Edgar Allan Poe’s “The Masque of the Red Death and Other Tales” (1892 collection), Sir Arthur Conan Doyle’s “Round the Red Lamp: Being Facts and Fancies of Medical Life” (1894), Leonora Blanche Alleyne’s “The Red Fairy Book” (1890), Stephen Crane’s “The Red Badge of Courage” (1895), “The Grand Grimoire” also known as “The Red Dragon” (likely from the 1800s, claims to be from 1521), and Karl Marx’s “Das Kapital” volumes 1-3 (1867-1894).
DIRECTOR: Eric Millikin
RUNTIME: 3:00
胡蝶之夢: THE BUTTERFLY DREAM
There was.. no.. is a part of me that wants to wake up from all of these one day. Maybe this world IS a lie and maybe that’s just what I WANT to believe.
There was a time when I questioned everything. Inspired by the ancient Taoist parable Zhuangzi’s Butterfly Dream, this film explores the blurred boundary between reality and illusion.
But does it matter? Whether this world is a dream, a simulation, or an undeniable reality, the answer changes nothing. It’s not about finding the truth but about existing within the unknown. Whether this is a dream or reality, a construct or the truth, the answer holds no weight. What difference does it make? Life goes on, and so do I. I simply live ‘today’.
WRITER/DIRECTORS: Suhyeon Scholastica Jin, Aria Suhyun Kim
PRODUCERS: Suhyeon Scholastica Jin, Aria Suhyun Kim
ADVISOR: Hyunjoo Park
LANGUAGE: Japanese, English subtitles
RUNTIME: 3:17
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