AI generated photo for representational purposes only.
Astana: More than 8,000 films from 125 countries have been submitted to the Astana AI Film Festival (AAIFF 2026) ahead of its upcoming event in October.
The international competition, dedicated to artificial intelligence-generated cinema, will take place in the Kazakh capital of Astana.
The total running time of the submitted works exceeded 100,000 minutes, while the festival's total funding amounted to 2 million U.S. dollars, AAIFF co-founders Almaz Zhali and Aizatulla Khussain said at a briefing.
The largest number of submissions came from the United States, with 1,395 works, while Kazakhstan submitted 829 films, followed by India with 702, China with 550 and South Korea with 349. The United Kingdom, Indonesia, Japan, Brazil and France also ranked among the top 10 countries by number of submissions, Kazinform said.
Nearly 40 percent of the films explored the festival's central theme, The Future Worth Living In, while the rest were submitted to the open competition, covering 19 genres with no thematic restrictions, it added.
