NY • 6/11LA • 6/18Tokyo • 7/30

AIF 2026 Tokyo

AIF 2026 TOKYO

The AI Festival is coming to Tokyo

AIF 2026 TOKYO

The AI Festival is coming to Tokyo

AIF 2026 Gallery

AIF 2026 GALLERY

Explore the 2026 NY and LA AIF photo galleries

AIF 2026 GALLERY

Explore the 2026 NY and LA AIF photo galleries

Presenting Partners

Lionsgate

AIF 2026

info

Welcome to Runway's fourth annual AI Festival. Originally established in 2022 with a focus on AI films, AIF has evolved into an interdisciplinary celebration of creatives experimenting at the forefront of art and technology. In Film, Design, New Media, Fashion, Advertising and Gaming.

Works showcased offer a glimpse at a new creative era. One made possible when today's brightest creative minds are empowered with the tools of tomorrow.

Finalists of the various AIF tracks will be selected and showcased both virtually as well at gala screenings in NYC and LA. Winning submissions will be chosen by an esteemed panel of jurors and shown at partner festivals around the world.

Tokyo – TOKYO NODE HALL

TOKYO NODE HALL

Photo Gallery

New York Los Angeles

AIFF

AIFF

AIFF

AIFF

AIFF

AIFF

AIFF

AIFF

AIFF

Film Winners

2026

A Face Only A Mother Could Love — Grand Prix

A Face Only A Mother Could Love

Robert Gaudette

7:50

Marcel Dupont, a man whose face only a mother could love, moves through Paris with complete confidence. The world moves away from him - he does not notice. This is a film about two lonely people, one act of courage and an accordion player who played exactly the right song at exactly the right moment.

THE WELL — Gold

THE WELL

Dorian & Daniel

5:29

Once upon a time, in a snow-covered trailer park, the wolf is found dead at the bottom of a well. A tragic accident - or so they say. But when a sharp-witted hare starts to investigate, the truth shifts. What secrets lie buried below?

Where Knights Fall — Silver

Where Knights Fall

Mathery

In a tower at the edge of a far away kingdom, Rapunzel waits. At the foot of the tower, the ground is thick with the bodies of knights, princesses and princes, all those who came before, all those who tried and fell. Then he arrives. He doesn't climb, but he crawls and slides.

Costa Verde — Honoree

Costa Verde

Léo Cannone & New Forest Film

Set in Corsica in the 90s, a young boy unboxes his first camera and documents a summer with his grandparents. What begins as play becomes a chronicle of small wonders and everyday magic. Costa Verde celebrates childhood nostalgia and family.

TAIRELL ISN'T REAL — Honoree

TAIRELL ISN'T REAL

Dave Clark

5:04

A hyper-perfect influencer begins to unravel when the internet becomes convinced he isn't real, forcing him to confront a terrifying possibility: they might be right.

Little Mes — Merit

Little Mes

Lucas Levitan & Fabián Jiménez

4:19

Who would you have become if you had taken a different path? Little Mes is an internal monologue built around that question, a constant unresolved doubt that follows a character through life.

Between Before and After — Merit

Between Before and After

Sifang Chen & Yang Wang

8:21

Kyoko sees a billboard of ex-lover Nagao and meets her again. Bound by a shared void rather than love, they circle a desire that never satisfies. As Nagao proposes a final plunge, reality intrudes, leaving a rupture where past and future become indistinguishable.

POSTMAN — Merit

POSTMAN

YUUUKI

7:00

A short animation set in a near future where the culture of letters has vanished. In a world of efficiency, a protagonist finds an old letter and embarks on a journey to deliver it, rediscovering forgotten emotions that efficiency cannot measure.

살(煞) - Divine Retribution — Merit

살(煞) - Divine Retribution

Minju Choi

7:39

In a Joseon-era village, the birth of a strange being unfolds a haunting story of a mother, a shaman and the villagers caught between fear and faith.

Simiyu, Lies and Happiness — Merit

Simiyu, Lies and Happiness

John Kirk Kelly

A quiet portrait of the thoughts and moments that shape the lives of guests and workers connected to an inn in Australia around the early 1980s.

"Best Of" Winners

2026

Shaping New Futures — A Global Salomon Campaign — Best of Advertising

Shaping New Futures — A Global Salomon Campaign

UNVEIL®

Best of Advertising

A character moves forward, and the world builds itself around her. Nature, technology, and imagination shifting in real time. AI not as a tool — as the creative partner that made it possible.

NESSUNO — Best of Design

NESSUNO

Ricardo Villavicencio

Best of Design

A small Chilean perfumery, built on limited editions and analog craft. Real paintings became the foundation — trained into a model that extended their colors, textures, and brushwork across the entire visual system. AI didn't replace the art. It animated it.

Puma: Memory Trace — Best of Fashion

Puma: Memory Trace

Dmytro Horeniuk

Best of Fashion

Life as fragmented memory traces — colliding, repeating, disappearing. The PUMA Mostro's spiked sole as a metaphor for the marks we leave behind. Real photographs trained into generated reality.

SYNAPTICON — Best of New Media

SYNAPTICON

Albert Barqué-Duran

Best of New Media

Neural signals captured live, decoded into language, then transformed into immersive audiovisual output in real time. A closed loop between the human mind and AI — thought becoming image, sound, and space. A probe into what co-creation looks like when the interface is the brain itself.

Pluck 'Em — Best of Gaming

Pluck 'Em

Adam Prusinowski

Best of Gaming

A complete game built in 12 hours with no coding skills and no handcrafted elements. Code, assets, music — all AI. A Duck Hunt–inspired roguelite as proof of concept.

Panels

2026

A Conversation with Ron Howard

Year

2026

A Conversation with Roger Avary & Gala Avary

Year

2026

A Conversation with Girish Balakrishnan & Joel Kuwahara

Year

2026

Jurors

2026

Roger Avary

Roger Avary

Director, Oscar-winning screenwriter, and the CEO of General Cinema Dynamics

Jane Rosenthal

Jane Rosenthal

Founder and CEO of Tribeca Enterprises

Bill Hensler

Bill Hensler

VP of Video, Audio and 3D at Adobe

Randall Bobbitt

Randall Bobbitt

Alternative Programming, Roku

Bruce Markoe

Bruce Markoe

Head of Post & Image Capture at IMAX

Kia Brooks

Kia Brooks

Managing Director of The Gotham Film and Media Institute

Joel Kuwahara

Joel Kuwahara

Co-founder and former President of Production for Bento Box Entertainment

Richard Kerris

Richard Kerris

VP and GM of Media and Entertainment at NVIDIA

Cristobal Valenzuela

Cristobal Valenzuela

Co-founder and CEO of Runway

The Awards

2026

CATEGORY

Grand Prix / $50,000

Cash prize & 1,000,000 Runway credits

Gold / $15,000

Cash prize & 500,000 Runway credits

Silver / $10,000

Cash prize & 500,000 Runway credits

Honoree (x2) / $1,000

Cash prize & 100,000 Runway credits

Merit (x5) / $500

Cash prize & 100,000 Runway credits

Submission Criteria

2026

(1)

3-15 minutes in length.

(2)

Includes the use of generative video within the film.

(3)

Film must be a fully contained, linear narrative.