{"id":72645,"date":"2026-06-13T09:40:17","date_gmt":"2026-06-13T09:40:17","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ai\/72645\/"},"modified":"2026-06-13T09:40:17","modified_gmt":"2026-06-13T09:40:17","slug":"the-violence-in-iran-was-real-the-film-showing-it-was-a-i","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ai\/72645\/","title":{"rendered":"The Violence in Iran Was Real. The Film Showing It Was A.I."},"content":{"rendered":"

Ash Koosha was in London, not Tehran, when the internet went dark<\/a> in the Iranian capital during a deadly government crackdown<\/a> against protesters in January. Some video clips and photographic evidence<\/a> did eventually trickle out.<\/p>\n

But Koosha, who was born in Iran, understood that the true extent of the suffering might never be fully known.<\/p>\n

So with his brother, Pooya Koosha, he got to work on \u201cDreams of Violets,\u201d a 75-minute docudrama in which every image was made by generative artificial intelligence.<\/p>\n

On the screen, officers unload their weapons, fires explode on the streets, and a child watches the chaos breathlessly. But the filmmaking was done from inside a London apartment. There were no actors, no sets, no cameras.<\/p>\n

\u201cSpeed matters here, right?\u201d said Koosha, a first-time filmmaker who left Iran in 2009. \u201cJournalists are scrambling to verify things. Humanitarian organizations are scrambling and artists are scrambling. They\u2019re trying to tell the story.\u201d<\/p>\n

Koosha\u2019s movie is a memorial, he says, in a moment when journalism was not possible.<\/p>\n

\u201cDreams of Violets\u201d had its world premiere at the Tribeca Festival in Manhattan this week, making it the first full-length, live-action film completely generated by A.I. to be accepted by a major film festival, according to Fountain 0<\/a>, the studio behind it. Koosha wrote the script and designed the A.I.-powered production pipeline to bring it alive.<\/p>\n

\u201cHe\u2019s using what he knows, the technology he has, as his paintbrush, as his keyboard, as his way to express himself,\u201d said Jane Rosenthal, a leading Hollywood producer and Tribeca co-founder who helped bring an A.I.-enhanced version of \u201cThe Wizard of Oz\u201d to Sphere<\/a> in Las Vegas.<\/p>\n

\u201cThis movie would not exist without this technology,\u201d she added. \u201cYou\u2019re not replacing anything or anyone.\u201d<\/p>\n

Rosenthal is among the Hollywood power players who are embracing what they see as the inevitable rise of A.I. in film and television.<\/p>\n

\u201cPandora\u2019s out of the box,\u201d she said. \u201cWe\u2019ve got to learn it.\u201d<\/p>\n

But the topic remains divisive. Some consider A.I. a job killer, a tool to sprint ahead in the unrelenting race to make movies cheaper. Others see it as an existential threat to society.<\/p>\n

The premiere of \u201cDreams of Violets\u201d was well attended, drawing a chatty line outside AMC 19th Street in Flatiron. When the theatergoers later trickled out, they hung around in petite discussion circles, weighing the merits of the film against their qualms.<\/p>\n

Some felt it was evident that the footage had been generated by A.I. and not filmed, while others said they were shocked by how real the people looked. But even those who found some of the movie\u2019s A.I.-generated visuals subpar understood the rationale behind the filmmaker\u2019s use of the technology.<\/p>\n

Andres Ramirez, a filmmaker, was critical, calling some scenes \u201ccartoonish\u201d and akin to \u201cearly PlayStation 2 graphics.\u201d The characters\u2019 emotional reactions, he added, did not always look genuine. Even so, he was sure that \u201cDreams of Violets\u201d would be the most-talked-about movie of the festival.<\/p>\n

Koosha, who has been working with A.I. for years, made the film in the late-night and early-morning hours outside his day job at a tech company. The whole thing cost about $2,000, said Tom Rogers, the executive producer.<\/p>\n

As Koosha developed his script, he could look at the footage being generated and match them up. A process of \u201cscripting as you\u2019re generating and then correcting,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

\u201cYou\u2019re looking at 30 minutes of color-graded, ready-to-go film,\u201d Koosha said. \u201cAnd then you\u2019re like, \u2018I don\u2019t like it.\u2019 And you go back and do it again.\u201d<\/p>\n

At the very end of the process, Koosha said, he adjusted two scenes that had begun to concern him. The changes took him about an hour.<\/p>\n

Those kinds of wholesale changes to the filmmaking process have dismayed some in the industry. Protections against generative A.I. were a central demand during the labor strikes in 2023<\/a>.<\/p>\n

In recent months, though, A.I. work has been put on display.<\/p>\n

A 95-minute A.I.-generated film called \u201cHell Grind\u201d premiered<\/a> at the March\u00e9 du Film, the marketplace component of the Cannes Film Festival. At a conference presented by the producers\u2019 guild<\/a>, a speaker asked audience members whether they had been asked to incorporate A.I. into their work, and three in four hands went up. Later this month, Rosenthal will be a juror at an A.I. film festival<\/a> planned in New York and Los Angeles.<\/p>\n

Renata Plaut, who had come to the \u201cDreams of Violets\u201d premiere curious about the film\u2019s technical aspects, said it showed that A.I. technology had its place in entertainment. She also appreciated the director\u2019s mission to raise awareness about the plight of Iranians.<\/p>\n

Ramirez, the filmmaker, maintained that atrocities depicted by A.I. just do not have the same impact as \u201cthe real thing.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cI think I will always wonder,\u201d he said, \u201cwhat the documentary of this film would look like.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Ash Koosha was in London, not Tehran, when the internet went dark in the Iranian capital during a…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":72646,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[24,25,40095,29644,369,40094,2638,40093,40096],"class_list":["post-72645","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-ai","tag-ai","tag-artificial-intelligence","tag-dreams-of-violets-movie","tag-festivals","tag-iran","tag-jane","tag-movies","tag-rosenthal","tag-tribeca-film-festival-nyc"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ai\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/72645","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ai\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ai\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ai\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ai\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=72645"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ai\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/72645\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ai\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/72646"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ai\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=72645"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ai\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=72645"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ai\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=72645"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}