{"id":713845,"date":"2026-06-04T05:20:11","date_gmt":"2026-06-04T05:20:11","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/713845\/"},"modified":"2026-06-04T05:20:11","modified_gmt":"2026-06-04T05:20:11","slug":"the-cgi-would-have-cost-millions-i-spent-2000-is-dreams-of-violets-ai-slop-or-the-future-of-film-making-movies","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/713845\/","title":{"rendered":"\u2018The CGI would have cost millions. I spent $2,000.\u2019 Is Dreams of Violets AI slop \u2013 or the future of film-making? | Movies"},"content":{"rendered":"

Next week a breakthrough 75-minute drama about the brutal crackdown in Iran on anti-government protesters in January will premiere at the Tribeca film festival in New York. It is called Dreams of Violets<\/a> and is based on journalism, video footage and eyewitness accounts. \u201cI would say 80% of it is a recreation of events that actually happened,\u201d says its Iranian-British director Ash Koosha. But Dreams of Violets is a work of fiction, not a documentary: a drama following a group of strangers caught up in the protests, who meet by chance in an alleyway. How on earth has Koosha managed to pull together a drama about the killings in less than six months?<\/p>\n

The answer, it turns out, is by using artificial intelligence. Every image and character in Dreams of Violets is AI-generated. Koosha says he created the characters by describing their physical appearances, using people he has known in the past as references. It would be too dangerous to base characters on living people in Iran<\/a>, he says. \u201cBecause of the security issue, it would not be safe for the characters to even remotely resemble someone.\u201d<\/p>\n

Where Dreams of Violets is breaking new ground is that it is the first fully-AI live action feature accepted at a major film festival. It\u2019s part of a gathering wave: last month AI action-adventure Hell Grind<\/a> screened at Cannes \u2013 though not in the festival\u2019s official selection. An all-AI animated feature called Where the Robots Grow<\/a> was released way back in 2024. Dreams of Violets, however, seems to be the first AI film to be accruing artistic and critical credibility \u2013 not that using AI has made things easy, says Koosha. \u201cA lot of the traditional festivals just don\u2019t want to touch AI. They don\u2019t want to even talk about it. What I\u2019ve realised is that no one wants to be first.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/p>\n

Koosha is speaking to me in a cafe near the Guardian\u2019s offices in King\u2019s Cross. Born in Iran, he has been based in London for nearly 20 years. His career began in Tehran playing in bands and acting, and he was imprisoned for two weeks in an Iranian maximum-security prison for organising a music festival (\u201cWe were playing Arctic Monkeys covers\u201d). After moving to London, he continued to make music. He\u2019s also a technology entrepreneur, co-founding an AI start-up called Claigrid with his brother Pooya. In 2018, he developed an AI singer called Yona<\/a> who wrote and performed her own music. \u201cBack then it was super sci-fi.\u201d He has also co-founded a studio, Fountain 0, to produce AI-generated films.<\/p>\n

What he has never done before, says Koosha, is politics. That changed in January this year<\/a>, as he watched footage on his social media feeds coming out of Iran, before the internet blackout. \u201cFor 72 hours, we saw things that were just horrifying. It was a bloodbath.\u201d Some estimates put the death toll at more than 30,000.<\/p>\n

Something in him snapped. \u201cThis made me political. This is where I drew the line. I thought: you know what, I\u2019m going to make the first film about this. It\u2019s time to use technology to keep something alive.\u201d It took him two-and-a-half months to make the film, working on it in the evenings at home while continuing his day job as CEO of Claigrid.<\/p>\n

\u2018We saw things that were horrifying. This made me political\u2019 \u2026 a still from the film. Illustration: Courtesy of Ash Koosha<\/p>\n

The script was not AI-generated, but he did use the chatbot Claude to improve the language and structure his thoughts. The genius of working with AI, he says, is that at any point a film-maker can change their mind, take the plot in an entirely different direction: \u201cYou just open another session. You don\u2019t have to worry that you\u2019re rewriting. You multiply your imagination until something hits the right spot.\u201d He also composed the score and edited the film without the use of AI.<\/p>\n

For his next AI film project, Koosha plans to create characters using actual people. \u201cBecause now you can license real faces.\u201d Does that mean the actor is not involved in the film after selling their features? \u201cThey can voice act. And they take a share in the financial gain of the film. I think it\u2019s going to be a new world of opportunities for people. Especially the face and image licensing.\u201d<\/p>\n

What about the acting, I ask? A Rada-trained actor with 20 years\u2019 experience under their belt might protest that they bring more to a film than just a face. \u201cThat is a very valid point, and I think there are stories that I would never allow AI to touch, that we still need to do in the theatrical way.\u201d The kind of films he\u2019d make with AI, he says, are \u201cimpossible movies, a film that requires a $300m budget, and it doesn\u2019t happen on this planet.\u201d<\/p>\n

double quotation markI\u2019m not selling AI. I\u2019m just trying to use a tool to tell a story<\/p>\n

Koosha says that Dreams of Violets would be \u201c100% impossible\u201d to bring to the screen in the traditional way. \u201cIf you wanted to do it in CGI, it would cost millions. I spent under $2,000.\u201d He also points out the difficulties in raising finance and pre-production. \u201cIt would take probably a year or two to get this right. The notion of making films at the speed of news itself is something I\u2019m super interested in.\u201d<\/p>\n

He also sees a role for AI in producing movies that look like massive studio productions at a fraction of the cost \u2013 removing the barriers for independent film-makers. \u201cAn indie film-maker mind is often a lot more fresh and creative than an industrial film-maker mind. In my view most stories that are told with $100m should be told through the lens of an indie film-maker.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u2018It\u2019s using technology to keep something alive\u2019 \u2026 an AI protester in Koosha\u2019s film. Illustration: Courtesy of Ash Koosha<\/p>\n

AI can democratise the industry, he argues. \u201cI\u2019m thinking about the next Jodorowsky<\/a>,\u201d he says, referring to the psychedelic Chilean film-maker. \u201cHow many years do they have to prove themselves to some bourgeois festival to get to a point where they get a $2m budget? I think that a new space will separate from the old space. And these people will start doing interesting things.\u201d<\/p>\n

Critics of AI-generated film dismiss it as soulless slop. But Hollywood directors from Steven Soderbergh to Darren Aronofsky are beginning to engage with AI. Last week, the Jurassic World Rebirth and Rogue One director Gareth Edwards described generative AI<\/a> as a \u201cgenius\u201d tool for film-makers, though Guillermo del Toro said he would \u201crather die\u201d than use it.<\/p>\n

Koosha says he\u2019s not generally a fan of AI films. \u201cSo far, I hate anything made that is made with AI. It disgusts me. I don\u2019t want to look at it. It gives me a headache.\u201d He also mistrusts some other people on the scene. \u201cThey want to make people get used to garbage. I\u2019m somewhere in the middle trying to be the voice of reason. I used AI. I\u2019m an artist. I tried not to use it in a crass way.\u201d He adds: \u201cI\u2019m not selling AI. I\u2019m just trying to use a tool to tell a story.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u2018Every film-maker will become the studio\u2019 \u2026 Koosha. Illustration: Ash Koosha<\/p>\n

Koosha voice-acted all the roles himself for Dreams of Violets then used AI to modify them \u2013 to make one sound like a woman in her 20s, another like an older man. Other AI film-makers are using voice actors: \u201cEach team will develop their own method,\u201d he says.<\/p>\n

Will audiences buy into AI characters, I ask? Koosha thinks so. \u201cI\u2019m going to give you a silly example. Do you watch Rick and Morty? Sometimes I go so deep emotionally when Rick is regretful. But Rick doesn\u2019t exist. We want Rick to exist because we have the same feelings. Pixar movies make me cry.\u201d<\/p>\n

Koosha is convinced that jobs will be created at Fountain 0. \u201cThere are so many areas that are new, that are basically unknown. I guarantee that this company will create at least 200 jobs that didn\u2019t exist.\u201d<\/p>\n

The lightning speed of change in AI film-making means that no one knows how it will disrupt film production. I ask Koosha what he thinks the industry will look like in 10 years\u2019 time: \u201cWell, I don\u2019t think Christopher Nolan will make another $300m movie. Underwriting a $200m to $300m movie will not make sense any more.\u201d He paints an egalitarian picture of a boom in mini-studios: \u201cEvery film-maker will become the studio.\u201d Creatives will be working in newly created jobs sharing in the profits. \u201cSo, I see that in the next 10 years there will be a reshuffling of money, hopefully in a better way. AI is going to be a catalyst of that change.\u201d<\/p>\n

Dreams of Violets screens on 10 June at the Tribeca film festival<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Next week a breakthrough 75-minute drama about the brutal crackdown in Iran on anti-government protesters in January will…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":713846,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[20],"tags":[62,276,277,49,48,61],"class_list":["post-713845","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-artificial-intelligence","tag-ai","tag-artificial-intelligence","tag-artificialintelligence","tag-ca","tag-canada","tag-technology"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/713845","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=713845"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/713845\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/713846"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=713845"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=713845"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=713845"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}