“Someone else’s submission”: A first-year Denver youth festival bars AI-generated films as Tribeca screens one

On June 10, the Tribeca Festival presented Dreams of Violets, a 75-minute feature built with AI-generated characters, locations and images.

A first-year Denver youth film festival says it would reject that kind of movie.

The Colorado Lakeside Youth Film Festival's public submission rule is seven words:

“No AI writing or image generation will be accepted.”

I asked festival director Dylan Früh how the festival draws that line.

“When it no longer becomes a tool, and it becomes the creator itself,” he said.

Früh continued: “When you receive something that’s made with generative AI, you’re really receiving someone else’s submission, not your own. You might have given the prompt, but what is actually spat out with their image or text is truthfully someone else’s work, just scavenged from somewhere.”

CLYFF head of programming John Patchen described the concern this way: “It’s not stealing in the traditional sense, but it is in the sense of what’s being brought over from other people’s ideas.”

Tribeca took the opposite approach, presenting Dreams of Violets as a special event.

The festival describes it as a docudrama set in Tehran in January 2026 and inspired by events across 47 years of Iranian civilian resistance.

Tribeca sent me written statements from writer-director Ash Koosha and festival co-founder Jane Rosenthal explaining the decision.

Koosha said he would have preferred actors, a full crew and physical locations.

He lives outside Iran and said he could not safely return or reach the people and places needed for a conventional production. He used AI to make a memorial to people killed during violence in January 2026 and over decades of repression, along with their families and children.

“The alternative was silence or forgetting, and that felt worse,” Koosha said.

He said he remains uncertain whether AI was the right form for the project, but believed the film had to be made with the means available to him.

Rosenthal said Tribeca has long supported artists working with new forms. She described Dreams of Violets as an example of AI being used for “deeply human storytelling.”

She said the technology and the film’s focus on Iran were both central to the project.

I also asked Tribeca whether filmmakers must disclose generative-AI use during its wider submission and selection process. The festival did not answer that question before publication.

“There’s your camera”

I asked Früh what he would say to a young filmmaker who believes AI is the only affordable way to make a movie.

“I would say almost every person at this point has a phone that has a camera on it,” he answered. “There’s your camera. I’d say almost everyone has one or two friends. There’s your actors right there.”

He said the festival is meant to push filmmakers younger than 30 to write, shoot and complete their own work.

I put the same argument to Matteen Saremi, a recent University of Colorado Denver film graduate.

He agreed that phones and friends can get someone started.

“That’s absolutely the gateway into filmmaking,” Saremi said.

But he did not think that model was enough for every project.

“I think when it comes to that being kind of a consistent stream of how to make films, I don’t think that is the most practical,” he said.

His current project, Borderline Friends, is seeking $1,600 for actors, production design, food and locations.

He said performers have been among the hardest parts of his productions to finance.

“Making a short film during tax season is not the most appealing for people who want to donate to it,” Saremi said. “We had to use our own pocket.”

Even with those financial limits, Saremi told me he opposes generated performers, voices, locations and backgrounds.

“Very early on, if you use a generative tool, it really doesn’t become yours,” he said. “It starts becoming someone else’s, or a lot of someones’.”

I also asked Saremi about Tribeca’s decision to present Dreams of Violets as a special event. He had not seen the film and first learned about it during our interview.

Saremi said work made primarily through generative AI “should also not be celebrated in such a huge light.”

What the festival will allow

CLYFF will not reject every film made with software that contains AI features.

Früh named Adobe Premiere Pro, DaVinci Resolve and Final Cut Pro as programs that already include automated tools used by filmmakers.

“If you were going to have a festival that is entirely no AI, in this day and age, it wouldn’t be possible,” he said.

He said the festival may allow tools used for stabilization, audio synchronization and other postproduction work. A filmmaker may use AI to organize ideas, he said, but must write the submitted script.

Saremi drew a similar line.

“AI can be used for a lot of the minutiae and the tedious points in the postproduction process,” he said.

I asked Früh about smaller uses, including an AI-generated object appearing in the background. He said the festival could treat a minor background element differently from a generated actor or central image.

Those decisions will be made case by case.

Patchen told me filmmakers are expected to disclose their use of AI. Organizers may ask for a script or question a filmmaker about how an element was made.

Patchen will make the final compliance decision.

“Ultimately, we can’t be 100% certain,” he said.

A separate category?

Christine Palmer, executive director of Film Score Fest Denver, had not watched Dreams of Violets before I interviewed her.

After I described the film and Tribeca’s presentation of it, she called the idea of a major festival presenting a largely generated feature “a little bit depressing,” though she said she would need more information about the completed film.

I asked where she would place generated work within a festival.

Palmer said generated films should at least be placed in a separate category and might eventually require a separate festival. She said AI could give filmmakers with less financial backing another way to realize their ideas, but could also reduce the number of people hired for a production.

“If AI can be used in an intelligent way that informs a director’s own creativity or enhances it, that could be a way to open the field to filmmakers with less financial backing,” Palmer said. “But it is also going to replace those roles, and it will change the human nature of the films that are created.”

Former Paramount chief technology officer Phil Wiser took a less categorical position when I interviewed him earlier this year.

“I don’t think fear is the right answer for anyone entering the field,” Wiser said. “I also don’t think that blind adoption or forcing AI or any tool into art is the right answer either.”

Wiser said artists should understand new technology and use it when it improves the audience’s experience, but the original idea should still come from the creator.

Questions for the Colorado Film Office

I asked the Colorado Film Office whether productions seeking state support or incentives must disclose generative-AI use.

I also asked how the office is considering new production technology alongside work for Colorado actors, writers and crew members.

The office said Film Commissioner Lauren Grimshaw Sloan was traveling and unavailable for comment before publication. It did not provide a written response or another representative.

The first test

CLYFF is accepting films through July 15. At least one producer, director or writer on each team must be younger than 30.

The submission fee is $13.50, and the festival says it prefers films shorter than 20 minutes.

Selections are scheduled to be announced July 21. The festival is scheduled for 6:30 p.m. July 30 at the Oriental Theater, 4335 W. 44th Ave. in Denver.

The policy will face its first test when organizers begin reviewing submissions.

Früh said the flaws of conventional filmmaking are part of what the festival wants to protect.

“So much of what makes art beautiful is it’s not perfect,” he said. “Something’s gone wrong. The lighting’s bad, it sounds bad. That shows you that a human tried.”

Disclosure: Früh and Patchen previously collaborated with the reporter on a separate video interview production led by the reporter. They had no role in editing or publication decisions for this article.