An Academy Award®-qualifying festival and one of Asia’s largest international short film festivals, Short Shorts Film Festival & Asia (SSFF & ASIA), released today the archived video of its international conference “The Future of Filmmaking with AI: Creativity, Collaboration, and Ethics,” held on October 26 as part of the SSFF & ASIA 2025 Screening in Autumn.
The conference opened with remarks by Seigo Tono, Executive Director of SSFF & ASIA, who provided an overview of the growing presence of AI-powered works at the festival.
He noted that SSFF & ASIA receives approximately 5,000 submissions from abroad each year, and that the share of films utilizing AI has been rising rapidly in recent years. He reported that AI-assisted works accounted for about 2% (112 films) in 2024, increasing to approximately 6% (275 films) in 2025.
The conference brought together filmmakers, producers, researchers, and industry leaders from 10 countries. Participants engaged in lively discussions across three themes: “Creativity & Collaboration,” “Ethics & Cultural Responsibility,” and “Future Vision of AI Cinema.
”The sessions explored how AI technologies are transforming the filmmaking process, with active debate around creativity, ethics, and copyright.
A detailed event report will follow on the next page.
This event was held as part of the FY2025 Japan Cultural Expo 2.0 program.
The Evolution of “Creativity & Collaboration” Brought by AI
In this session, speakers shared a wide range of real-world practices that position AI as a “creative partner” in filmmaking. Japanese filmmaker Takeshi Kushida (Last Dream) spoke about producing his AI-assisted short film Last Dream, describing AI as “a dialogue partner that draws out humanity’s memories through words—something that goes beyond being a mere tool.” Fellow director Hiroki Yamaguchi (GRANDMALEVIT) noted that “at this point, AI is closer to an assistant that helps visualize a creator’s intentions, but in the future it may become a true co-creator.”
From Germany, composer and filmmaker Marcel Barsotti presented the production process behind his AI film Imperial, completed after layering more than 30,000 prompts. He emphasized that “no matter what technology we use, the core of cinema remains the story.” Co-screenwriter Gundula Barsotti-Bast added that, while the fundamentals of writing do not change, AI production introduces a new kind of labor: “At the beginning there is no big difference between real and AI films, but once prompting starts, you have to rewrite over and over because the prompts never come out as you want.”
French media executive Alexandre Michelin added that “in France, some discussions view AI as a cultural threat, but looking back at the history of art, new technologies have always reinvented creativity.”
Possibilities and Challenges of AI Cinema Across Regions
Next, panelists from around the world shared the current state of AI adoption and the challenges emerging in their respective regions. Javid Sobhani, programmer for the Tehran International Short Film Festival (Iran), stressed that AI’s role cannot be reduced to a single label: “I can’t call it just a tool, and I can’t romanticize it as a co-creator either,” noting instead that in constrained environments AI becomes “a shield” that can even function like a producer or co-writer. Senegalese filmmaker Hussein Dembel Sow echoed this view from another context, emphasizing AI’s potential for leapfrogging production barriers: “Where I come from, we are happy because it will help us build new industry,” adding that without AI, large-scale VFX-driven genres such as fantasy or science fiction would remain out of reach.
Douglas Montgomery, former strategic advisor at Warner Bros. (USA), highlighted the expanding possibilities and future outlook enabled by AI, saying that “AI is not perfect and does not replace humans, but it is getting better every day,” and predicting that animation production timelines will likely be shortened not by small margins but “by a factor of two to five going forward.”
Submissions of AI-Assisted Works on the Rise
— A New Wave of Cinematic Expression
“AI Does Not Take Away Creativity; It Expands It.”
On the other hand, Mexican director Oscar Parres pointed out that Mexico is still in an early stage of adoption and that institutional frameworks lag behind creators: “They told me AI is not creative or copyright—it’s just a tool,” insisting that education and ethical awareness will be essential as technology spreads.
In addition, Shin Chul, Festival Director of the Bucheon International Fantastic Film Festival (Korea), warned that “every morning a new game-changer AI tool appears,” and expressed concern that a drift toward “full auto-creation” could be frightening, risking the loss of a filmmaker’s intent—yet he also emphasized the democratizing upside, arguing that AI allows young creators to start from “the same starting point as James Cameron,” shifting the competition toward originality.“
With the growing number of submissions incorporating AI technologies, AI cinema is no longer a passing experiment. Rather, it may be establishing itself as a new genre of visual expression.” Guided by this question, one message was repeatedly underscored throughout the discussions: AI is not something that deprives humans of creativity, but a presence that expands it. At the conference, Tetsuya Bessho, Founder/President of SSFF & ASIA, expressed this vision in his remarks: “Our mission is to continue celebrating the power of storytelling, no matter what era of technological innovation we are in.” With strong attendance and enthusiastic engagement, the conference concluded on a high note—sharing a collective sense of anticipation for a new era of filmmaking in which humans and AI create together.
