World AI Documentary Festival
in Cannes
in Cannes
Where Truth Meets a New Eye
The documentary has always been the mirror of the world — the gaze of a human being cast upon a reality that no one else could have seen in this way. Artificial intelligence does not change that truth. It gives it new ways to be expressed.
The World AI Documentary Festival in Cannes is an AI documentary festival dedicated to factual films using artificial intelligence with transparency and artistic purpose.
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Festival on FilmFreeWay
Submissions for 2027 are now open!
OUR MISSION
The World AI Documentary Festival was born from a tension familiar to every documentary filmmaker: between the raw truth of reality and the need to shape it so that it can move, question, and transform. For decades, that shaping was limited by budget, access to archives, and the technical ability to reconstruct. AI radically changes this equation. A filmmaker can now reconstruct inaccessible historical events, explore forbidden territories, and give a voice to those whom no camera has ever filmed — without ever betraying the truth they carry. Our mission is to recognize and amplify these new documentary languages, driven by filmmakers who understand that AI is above all a tool of access — to reality as much as to the invisible.
Directly affiliated with the World Film Festival in Cannes – Remember the Future, founded by filmmaker Karolina Bomba — the first festival in the world to award AI-generated creations as early as 2020 — the World AI Documentary Festival is rooted in a founding principle: AI in the service of the human gaze, never in its place. Our conviction is that technology only has value through the ethical rigor of the person who holds it. AI breaks the boundaries of what is possible: a journalist-filmmaker without an archive budget can now reconstruct a forgotten chapter of history. An isolated researcher can transform massive datasets into a living, accessible, moving story. The limit is no longer the means — it is the intention.
OUR THREE PILLARS
The vision above all
Every film is assessed on the relevance of its subject, the depth of its investigation, and the strength of its point of view. AI is a tool. The documentary is what the filmmaker chooses to show through it.
Responsible truth
We require that every use of AI — reconstruction, archive synthesis, visual generation — be explicitly disclosed in the film. Transparency is not a weakness: it is a mark of integrity.
A universal platform
Journalist-filmmakers, researchers, independent authors, visual activists — open to all nationalities, all subjects, and all documentary forms, from short films to feature-length works.
THE JURY & THE SELECTION
An international jury composed of documentary filmmakers, investigative journalists, historians, researchers, and media ethics experts evaluates each film according to rigorous criteria: relevance of the subject, strength of the investigation, transparency in the use of AI, narrative power, and editorial integrity. The winners are honored during the annual ceremony of the World AI Documentary Festival, in Cannes — where the world’s great truths have always found a stage worthy of them. Submitting to the World AI Documentary Festival means affirming that your subject deserves to be heard — and that you had the audacity to find a new path to tell it.
members receive a 10% discount on their submissions