Reply AI Film Festival Names Salvatores-Led Jury, 10 Finalists
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- Reply AI Film Festival selected 10 shorts from a pool of 3,000 submissions spanning 76 countries, with the winner to be announced Sept. 6 at the Match Point Arena inside the Venice Tennis Club on the Lido.
- Gabriele Salvatores, the Italian director who won the 1991 international feature Oscar for "Mediterraneo," will chair the jury, joined by "The Lion King" director Rob Minkoff and "Twilight" director Catherine Hardwicke.
- Jury members also include VFX supervisor Giacomo Mineo — whose credits include Christopher Nolan's "The Odyssey" — along with Netflix and DreamWorks alum Christina Lee Storm, now head of Secret Level's narrative studio, and former Sky Studios Italy EVP Nils Hartmann.
- Three prizes will be awarded: a best AI short film, an AI for Good Award partnered with the International Telecommunication Union honoring UN Sustainable Development Goals, and the Reply AI Studios Grand Prix for the most innovative use of AI in the creative process.
- Selected films include Robert Gaudett's Canadian entry "A Face Only a Mother Could Love," British director Mike Bennion's "Kev" about living with blindness, and two Chinese shorts: Jiaze Li's sci-fi piece "Website" and the 2xLabs collective's dystopian "Centenerian Kindergarten," set in a 2090 fertility-crisis future.
Why it matters: The festival's placement alongside Venice signals AI filmmaking is being formally tested by the prestige cinema establishment. With 3,000 submissions from 76 countries, the competition has become a global pipeline — and the inclusion of Salvatores, Minkoff, and Hardwicke gives the results commercial weight beyond a niche tech showcase.
