AIF 2026
AIF 2026 TOKYO
The AI Festival is coming to Tokyo
AIF 2026 TOKYO
The AI Festival is coming to Tokyo
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
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.
TokyoJuly 30TokyoTOKYO NODE HALL
Photo Gallery
Winning Films
2026
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
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
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
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
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
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
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
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
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
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
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
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
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
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
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
[](https://www.imdb.com/name/nm0000812/)
Director, Oscar-winning screenwriter, and the CEO of General Cinema Dynamics
Jane Rosenthal
[](https://www.imdb.com/name/nm0742772/)
Founder and CEO of Tribeca Enterprises
Bill Hensler
VP of Video, Audio and 3D at Adobe
Randall Bobbitt
Alternative Programming, Roku
Bruce Markoe
[](https://www.imdb.com/name/nm0548581/)
Head of Post & Image Capture at IMAX
Kia Brooks
[](https://www.imdb.com/name/nm10030191/)
Managing Director of The Gotham Film and Media Institute
Joel Kuwahara
[](https://www.imdb.com/name/nm0476669/)
Co-founder and former President of Production for Bento Box Entertainment
Richard Kerris
[](https://www.linkedin.com/in/rkerris)
VP and GM of Media and Entertainment at NVIDIA
Cristobal Valenzuela
[](https://runwayml.com/)
Co-founder and CEO of Runway
The Awards
2026
CATEGORY
FilmNew MediaGamingDesignAdvertisingFashion
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
FilmNew MediaGamingDesignAdvertisingFashion
(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.
View full submission criteria