{"id":665394,"date":"2026-08-31T15:51:22","date_gmt":"2026-08-31T15:51:22","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/665394\/"},"modified":"2026-08-31T15:51:22","modified_gmt":"2026-08-31T15:51:22","slug":"francesco-carrozzini-on-venice-bound-ai-film-be-brave","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/665394\/","title":{"rendered":"Francesco Carrozzini on Venice-Bound AI Film ‘Be Brave’"},"content":{"rendered":"

\n\tNew York-based Italian director Francesco Carrozzini is heading to the Venice Film Festival<\/a> with \u201cBe Brave\u201d an 85-minute portrait of Renzo Rosso, founder of the Diesel fashion brand. The groundbreaking doc uses AI in a way that \u201ccan still live within a space of emotion and storytelling,\u201d he says.<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cBe Brave\u201d portrays Rosso as a visionary underdog who went against the grain and rose from poverty to owning a fashion empire. Carrozzini did not shoot a single frame of his protagonist, instead recreating Rosso at different stages of his life using AI. <\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cI want to put this [film] forward as an invitation for everyone to think about how AI as a tool can open up new creative possibilities for filmmakers,\u201d Venice chief Alberto Barbera stated when announcing its inclusion in the festival.\u00a0\u201cBe Brave\u201d is among the first AI features to launch from a top-tier film festival.<\/p>\n

\n\tCarrozzini was first in Venice with \u201cFranca: Chaos and Creation,\u201d the doc he made about his mother, the late, influential editor of Italian Vogue. The director was subsequently on the Lido in 2022 with his first feature \u201cThe Hanging Sun.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tIn the year-and-a-half that Carrozzini spent making \u201cBe Brave\u201d \u201cAI has changed to a point where what we were doing in the beginning had to be redone,\u201d he says. \u201cAnd the moment we will be in the theater it will probably be old already,\u201d he adds. This makes it hard. But \u201cWorking with a medium that is transforming at this pace is also really exciting,\u201d he notes.<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cBe Brave\u201d is produced by Lorenzo Mieli, Mario Gianani, and Gabriele Immirzi at Rome-based Our Films, a Mediawan company.<\/p>\n

\n\tCarrozzini speaks to Variety ahead of Venice about the challenges of making \u201cBe Brave\u201d and his thoughts on how AI can best be utilized in the filmmaking space.<\/p>\n

\n\tWhy did you decide to use AI for this project?<\/strong><\/p>\n

\n\tLorenzo Mieli approached me with the idea of making a film about Renzo Rosso. Initially, I was a bit reluctant because I had sort of taken a step back from the world of fashion that I grew up in to throw myself into narrative film and TV. But Lorenzo insisted, and when he wants to sell you an idea he\u2019s pretty effective. The idea was to create something a bit innovative and to experiment with AI, though it wasn\u2019t quite clear what we were going to do. So we started testing the idea. In the very beginning, it was really about necessity. There is a lot of archival like TV stuff of Renzo Rosso, but there\u2019s no good interviews. There are no really good intimate moments in his archives. So the idea became: first of all, we can recreate those from scratch; though we were worried about them not being believable. From the seed of that idea, then came the idea of: Well, let\u2019s take AI and make it sort of the theme of the film and also make it the challenge towards something bigger than ourselves.<\/p>\n

\n\tWhat was the next step?<\/strong><\/p>\n

\n\tWe wrote a script. This film is fully scripted. We started toying with the idea of me finding Renzo; a rather well-known device in documentary filmmaking. But at the same time putting together the puzzle of who he is, just as he was running away from me because he was trying to trick me. We used this device, but then it sort of became the theme of the film. This film is not a thesis on AI. The only thing that is said towards the end \u2013 which I think is really important \u2013 is that the human has to come first. This is a reflection on AI in storytelling and entertainment. It\u2019s not a reflection on AI tout court.<\/p>\n

\n\tLet\u2019s drill down on the nuts and bolts of making this piece. It\u2019s not all AI because there are some so-called talking heads in the doc that are real people. For the rest, you had a reservoir of archive material to draw on. Talk to me about your workflow.<\/strong><\/p>\n

\n\tIt was a nightmare, especially in the beginning, until we found the workflow, as you say. Because it\u2019s trial and error. As you know, AI will never give you exactly what you\u2019re asking. It will always give you a version of what you\u2019re asking. <\/p>\n

\n\tHow did this process apply to putting Renzo on screen?<\/strong><\/p>\n

\n\tWe used pictures of Renzo from the time [in which his scenes and interviews are set]. And then you have to have him speak. And you have to have him say what you want. And do it in the voice that you want. He also has to be dressed the way you want. Just boiling things down to that, and to the voice and the lip sync is painstaking. Regarding Renzo\u2019s voice in this film, it had to have different ages as well, so that it would really be as real as possible. The first task is getting what you want.<\/p>\n

\n\tAnd beyond that?<\/strong><\/p>\n

\n\tTrying to capture not only his physical age, but his behavior. For people who don\u2019t know this process, behavior is really, I would say, the hardest thing. You can get the voice perfect. You can get the image right. But it\u2019s the behavior that was really challenging in creating quite a lot of footage of Renzo. <\/p>\n

\n\tWhat was it like for you to be directing yourself (as you appear in the film) done in AI?<\/strong><\/p>\n

\n\tWell, it\u2019s all based on my pictures, and because it\u2019s me, it\u2019s the part that scared me the most. With Renzo sometimes I would think I saw a tiny discrepancy. But with me, I was like: \u201cOh my god, that\u2019s real!\u201d <\/p>\n

\n\tBack to the workflow. Can you describe it in detail?<\/strong><\/p>\n

\n\tAll this becomes a workflow problem. Labeling all this material as if it was footage, and making it accessible to the editor. Blackstone was one of the companies behind a big part of it. And then this genius, Roberto Beragnoli who was the AI artist, did the heavy lifting. It was really months and months of finding a way to get all that we wanted, in the order that we wanted it.<\/p>\n

\n\tIt looks like just a documentary. But the work that went into it is like the work of a big, heavy CGI feature film. The quality part was a big challenge, because there are so many different software tools that we used to create the material. In AI you work at very low quality, and you have to upscale it. It\u2019s very technical. I don\u2019t want to get too nerdy, but the whole process is quite nerdy.<\/p>\n

\n\tYou\u2019ve talked to me about creating a person with AI. How do you create a place with people in it?<\/strong><\/p>\n

\n\tThat was really a very exciting filmmaking endeavour because with anything I do that is scripted, I have to come up with you know, the same exact number of [visual] ideas. If the scene says: \u201cOff Broadway theater. Morning. Ten people waiting in line.\u201d I have to decide how do those ten people look? How are they dressed? Where exactly are they? In the beginning it was very frustrating because instead of casting and scouting and talking to a costume designer, you do it with AI. <\/p>\n

\n\tDo you think it\u2019s important for the viewer of this piece to know when they are watching AI and when they are not?<\/strong><\/p>\n

\n\tI want to say no. This film tells a story of a man who lived, who is real, and whose adventures are all quite true. And so, if we are able to entertain you, make you laugh and empathize with this character, then that\u2019s what counts. What interests me is not whether they\u2019re able to discern it or not, but whether the film has an effect.<\/p>\n

\n\tOne of the fears concerning AI in fiction filmmaking is that the medium of cinema could lose the value of the empathic connection people have with other humans. What are your thoughts about that?<\/strong><\/p>\n

\n\tThat\u2019s why I was interested in approaching AI through the medium of documentary, which is very different from fiction, although ours is a fictionalized documentary, because it\u2019s written and created. It still has the form of the documentary, it has that filter that you put on when you watch it. If this was that beautiful documentary \u201cFree Solo\u201d [which captured rock climber Alex Honnold\u2019s hair-raising ascent of Yosemite National Park\u2019s 3,000-foot El Capitan rock formation] that would be a very different thing because we would be pretending that something that never happened had happened.<\/p>\n

\n\tHow would you feel about directing a fiction film in AI?<\/strong> <\/p>\n

I think something similar is happening with scripted material in fiction. With TV shows and movies. We haven\u2019t overcome that yet. And I\u2019m not sure that we want to. The empathy you talk about, it\u2019s generated by real people doing things that, despite being more or less made up, are still human. That emotion is human. That cry is human. That laughter is human. Once you know that it\u2019s not human \u2013 and right now we can tell, even if we\u2019re not told \u2013 the moment you start watching, after five minutes you know that you\u2019re not going to get on board exactly because that empathy is lacking. Again, I\u2019m not saying that we fully succeeded. People will tell us [whether we did or not]. But we tried to apply a form of AI that can still live within a space of emotion and storytelling, I think. Because you can\u2019t discern it, it still works for its purpose. Right now I would not necessarily take on a project, such as a historic film or a fiction film made in the present day, where I don\u2019t use actors.<\/p>\n

\n\tThis interview\u00a0has been edited and condensed for clarity.<\/p>\n

\t\t\t\t\t\t\"\"<\/p>\n

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