Hollywood employees, take note.
AI-produced feature film to be screened at Tribeca Film Festival on Wednesday gives you a glimpse of what the future of filmmaking jobs will look like.
Ash Kusha, the creative force behind “Violets”, said he brought the film to life almost single-handedly from his London apartment, using Anthropic’s Claude and other AI tools in place of traditional cast and crew. This is the first fully AI-generated feature film to be screened at Tribeca. One of the most competitive stages in independent film.
Kusha, an Iranian exile, said she had no choice but to rely on AI to make the film, which she described as a memorial to the victims of the Iranian government’s crackdown on protesters in January. He said that he wanted to make a complete production, but could not safely build sets in Iran or risk the lives of real actors in retaliation.
“I have been prosecuted for atrocities in Iran,” he told Business Insider. He explained that his goal was to visualize events that the world would never fully witness through traditional journalism or filmmaking.
“Violet Dream” follows five strangers hiding from violent soldiers during a crackdown on protests, and a child in a wheelchair witnesses their plight and decides to intervene. The film is set in Tehran and is inspired by real events during 47 years of civilian resistance.
The role of AI in film production first became a point of tension during the 2023 Writers and Actors Strike. Kusha’s experiment provides an example of how this technology has the potential to dramatically change employment across film, from pre-production to the silver screen.
His film’s status at Tribeca also raises troubling questions. The question is, if one person could use AI to make festival-quality films, what would happen to Hollywood jobs?
“We didn’t need anyone to do this. We didn’t have any employees,” said Kusha, 40.
Kusha said “Violet Dream” is a memorial to the victims of the Iranian government’s crackdown on protesters in January. ask Kusha
Kusha doesn’t think AI will completely replace traditional filmmaking. He added that while some stories are impossible to tell through traditional filmmaking, “there are also stories that are impossible to create with AI.”
He believes AI has given him more than just independence. It also allows him to work at “the speed of news,” he said. He created “Dreams of Violets” in about two months, and said he could have completed it in just three weeks if he didn’t have a day job as CEO of a technology infrastructure startup.
Kusha said the 75-minute production cost only about $2,000, significantly cheaper than most microbudget independent films. He said the bulk of the budget is made up of subscription fees for AI tools that he normally pays, as well as additional usage credits.
Kusha said he wrote the script himself and used AI to generate the video elements, which primarily required a team of actors, costume designers, location scouts and cameramen. He emphasized that he was in control the entire time.
“I purely determine the outcome 100%,” he said. “I just use the AI model to render, pretty much print, the desired output.”
Koosha’s background is primarily in music production and technology. Although he starred in the 2009 film “Nobody Knows a Persian Cat” about his life, which won the Cannes Film Festival Award and forced him into exile, he says he does not consider himself a director. He said he also tried directing a feature film in 2015, but failed because it required more than was technically possible and on budget at the time.
Kusha said AI alone cannot explain the film’s success in being screened at major film festivals. Ash Kusha
Still, Kusha said AI is not a replacement for filmmaking expertise, and he doesn’t want Violets to give people the impression that anyone can suddenly make a movie by typing a prompt into an AI app.
“This is false advertising by current AI model sellers,” he said. “That’s a complete joke.”
He added that technology alone cannot explain the film’s success in entering major film festivals, as the AI tools he used were also available to others at the same time.
“The models themselves didn’t make this movie,” he says. It has to be someone involved in the movie industry.
Kusha says “Violet Dreams” shows that AI is not eliminating filmmaking expertise, but changing the way that expertise is applied. He said the future belongs to those who already understand the basics of the industry and can translate that intuition into AI workflows.
This means some film jobs may evolve rather than disappear. Employees who were once responsible for physical production tasks may instead spend more time on research, world-building, image generation and creative decision-making, and experts in areas such as lighting and sound may apply their skills through AI tools rather than on set, he said.
Kusha said he provided the voices for six characters, including women and children, and argued that voice acting is one area where AI still lags behind humans. Ash Kusha
“They know a lot about light and reflection positioning, the needs of cameras and cinematographers,” he said. “Learning how to preserve lighting with AI image generation becomes an expert job in itself.”
To be sure, there’s at least one area where AI falls short: voice acting, Kusha said. Kusha said she provided the voices for six characters in “Dreams of Violets,” including women and children. He said the AI’s voice model lacked realism and used a basic voice changer to adjust for gender and age.
For his next project, Kusha plans to hire five people who will use AI in the same way he does. By doing so, if we work together, we will be able to accomplish more in less time than in Violet’s Dream.
“These are new jobs and you need film experience,” he said. “You can’t just recruit someone from any industry and bring them in.”