This film festival left me feeling better about AI moviemaking

Hello again from Fast Company and welcome to Plugged In. A quick housekeeping note: We will be off next week. See you on July 10. Last week, I attended a film festival in Los Angeles. It felt, well, festive, with a step-and-repeat backdrop for photo ops, celebratory cocktails, and an enthusiastic full house for the evening’s program of 10 short movies. The most notable thing about the event, however, was what it didn’t have: any films created using old-timey techniques such as pointing a camera at human actors. This was Runway’s AI Festival, the fourth-annual screening organized by the maker of AI models and tools for generating synthetic video. Back in 2023, when Runway held its first festival, algorithms for video creation were in their infancy—more magic trick than storytelling medium. But as with many things about AI, progress is happening at a head-snapping pace. A Fast Company Next Big Things in Tech honoree in 2025, Runway is at the forefront of the industry’s effort to produce models that can simulate cinematic realism at greater length and with more consistency from shot to shot. Just as important, filmmakers have had three more years to get their heads around AI video’s powers and limitations. Those who submitted works for this year’s festival weren’t required to use Runway’s technologies and tools, but the company says “the vast majority” likely did. Not having been to any of Runway’s previous festivals, I wasn’t sure what to expect from this one. Left to their own devices, consumer AI products such as ChatGPT and Gemini churn out imagery whose primary distinguishing characteristic is its suffocating blandness. I was concerned the festival’s filmmakers might be unable to overcome the technology’s tendency to genericize everything, but willing to give them a chance. Now, it must be said that even guarded open-mindedness about AI-generated movies remains controversial. In April, Cannes—the most famous film festival of them all—banned them from competi