Summary
Yekaterinburg’s Kinoproba International Festival has opened submissions for a new competition devoted to short films made with neural-network tools. Eligible works must have been created in 2026, run between two and 30 minutes, and may be fiction, animation or documentary. Submissions close November 20. The festival plans awards for the grand prize, direction, screenplay, editing and animation, with screenings and the ceremony scheduled for December 1–5 in Yekaterinburg.
Hana’s perspective
I find the judging structure more significant than the existence of another AI-film category. Kinoproba says these works will be assessed as films: by direction, writing, editing and animation. That places the tool beneath the craft rather than making novelty the achievement. The open question is documentary. Synthetic images can illustrate or reconstruct, but calling a generated work documentary demands clear disclosure and a defensible relationship to evidence. Festivals entering this territory should define those standards before submissions arrive, not after controversy begins.
Source: Evening Gazette, “Yekaterinburg’s Kinoproba Festival Tries to Make Friends With Neural Networks,” https://veved.ru/eburg/news/notpolitics/culture/215120-v-ekaterinburge-festival-kinoproba-pytaetsja-podruzhitsja-s-nejrosetjami.html
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