The Violence in Iran Was Real. The Film Showing It Was A.I.
The Violence in Iran Was Real. The Film Showing It Was A.I.
https://www.nytimes.com/2026/06/13/movies/ai-tribeca-dreams-violets-iran.html
Publish Date: 2026-06-13 05:01:00
Source Domain: www.nytimes.com
Ash Koosha was in London, not Tehran, when the internet went dark in the Iranian capital during a deadly government crackdown against protesters in January. Some video clips and photographic evidence did eventually trickle out.
But Koosha, who was born in Iran, understood that the true extent of the suffering might never be fully known.
So with his brother, Pooya Koosha, he got to work on “Dreams of Violets,” a 75-minute docudrama in which every image was made by generative artificial intelligence.
On the screen, officers unload their weapons, fires explode on the streets, and a child watches the chaos breathlessly. But the filmmaking was done from inside a London apartment. There were no actors, no sets, no cameras.
“Speed matters here, right?” said Koosha, a first-time filmmaker who left Iran in 2009. “Journalists are scrambling to verify things. Humanitarian organizations are scrambling and artists are scrambling. They’re trying to tell the story.”
Koosha’s movie is a memorial, he says, in a moment when journalism was not possible.
“Dreams of Violets” had its world premiere at the Tribeca Festival in Manhattan this week, making it the first full-length, live-action film completely generated by A.I. to be accepted by a major film festival, according to Fountain 0, the studio behind it. Koosha wrote the script and designed the A.I.-powered production pipeline to bring it alive.
“He’s using what he knows, the technology he has, as his paintbrush, as his keyboard, as his way to express himself,” said Jane Rosenthal, a leading Hollywood producer and Tribeca co-founder who helped bring an A.I.-enhanced version of “The Wizard of Oz” to Sphere in Las Vegas.
“This movie would not exist without this technology,” she added. “You’re not replacing anything or anyone.”
Rosenthal is among the Hollywood power players who are embracing what they see as the inevitable rise of A.I. in film and television.
“Pandora’s out of the box,” she said….
