Kazakh filmmaker’s comedy named among Top 25 and wins award at AI film festival in Astana

Kazakh filmmaker Myrzakhan Zhumakhan has won the Best Character award at the Astana AI Film Festival. His comedy It Was Just a Joke was selected among the winners of the intl competition for films created using artificial intelligence, El.kz reports.

The winners were announced in Astana on October,3. The festival’s Grand Prix was awarded to a filmmaker from Latvia.

About the Kazakh filmmaker’s film

The film centres on a dog and its owner’s brother. What begins as a prank eventually turns into a full-scale conflict.

Zhumakhan won in the Best Character category. Other awards were presented for Story, Visual Language, Directing, and Concept.

The filmmaker acknowledged that he was highly nervous about the level of competition:

“There are so many talented and outstanding people here. All the participants put a great deal of effort into their work, so every one of them was a worthy competitor.”

Main Award Winners

The Grand Prix was awarded to Nikolai Shestak from Latvia for his film The First Honest Day. In the film, a person’s actions literally transform their appearance: wrongdoing makes the character ugly, while acts of kindness make them more attractive. The filmmaker intends to invest the USD 450,000 prize in developing new projects.

Second place went to Abhik Banerjee from India for his film SITARA. He received USD 200,000.

Third place was awarded to Spanish filmmaker Ernest Desumbila for his work Looking For Perseida. The jury awarded him USD 100,000.

Film Selection Process

A total of 8,067 submissions were received for the competition. By this measure, the festival became the world’s largest international competition for films created using artificial intelligence.

Submissions were received from filmmakers in 125 countries. The finalists were evaluated by an international jury that included former UNESCO Director-General Audrey Azoulay, representatives of the Chinese film industry, and investor Balaji Srinivasan.

A total of 25 films were selected for the final programme. The selection process focused primarily on the originality of the filmmaker’s creative vision and the overall coherence of the film.

Prize Fund

The festival’s total prize and investment fund amounted to USD 2 million. Half of the total amount was allocated for awards to the winners.

The remaining half is earmarked for investment. The funds will be allocated to promising teams working with artificial intelligence, while part of the funding will support the development of film production in Kazakhstan.