Prize money for AI film just got serious. Latvian director Nikolay Shestak took the $450,000 Grand Prix at the first Astana AI Film Festival for The First Honest Day, a short where bad deeds make characters physically uglier and good ones change them for the better. It beat 8,067 entries from 125 countries.
Five craft awards paid $50,000 each, for character, story, visuals, direction and concept, and the winners are worth a watch. Shestak is a former actor who started making AI-assisted films two years ago, which says plenty about where the edge sits.
