The films began as clay. Every character on screen was a piece I built by hand, scanned
and handed to a model.
Festivals were the fastest way to find out whether the work read to people who had never
heard of Little Martians. It’s been fascinating to be part of the AI cinema emerging scene.
The photograph at the top is a drive-in in the desert at Bombay Beach: a screen, a fire,
a golf cart and the whole town parked around it. That’s when I started the
Mars College AI Film Festival
in 2023, and that’s when my filmmaker career started. Gene Kogan wrote about
that first edition.
The screenings at the foot of this page run from that to a proper auditorium in China and
a bomb shelter in Ukraine.
Watch
All the films
Newest first.
▶
Verdelis & Mycos
2025 . Award-winning science-fiction animation
What if future beings could change the present? In a distant future, Little Martians are descendants of all of Earth’s lifeforms. Verdelis, a plant humanoid who believes in patient cultivation, clashes with Mycos, a fungal mind that embraces chaos as evolution. Their argument about the inevitability of suffering escalates into a radical proposition: what if they could reshape time itself, and make gentler paths through history?
Kweku is the pattern explorer, out of the lava caves of Mars. A song about how patterns are in everything, from ancestral African drawings to the most advanced artificial intelligences.
2024 . With Gene Kogan. Sold at Christie’s with the original sculpture
Little Martians are future beings who claim to be the creators of our reality. Made with Gene Kogan and his Abraham project, this is the animation that went to Christie’s Augmented Intelligence auction alongside the ceramic it came from, and to the CVPR AI Art Gallery.
Attention, earthlings: Verdelis the Little Martian is about to land on your shelves. Part plant, part human, part AI. A cosmic adventure that will make you wonder whether the plant on your windowsill is in fact a spy.
2024 . Introducing Verdelis. Cannes World, Best Female Director, Super Short Film
Little Martians are future beings who claim to be the creators of our reality. One of them wants to apologise to humanity. Built from real ceramics, with Blender and Eden.art, and music made with Suno. The most travelled of the films: some thirty festivals and a dozen prizes.
Physical handmade ceramic pieces, 3-D scanned and turned into AI-powered avatars. Originally published in the NVIDIA AI Art Gallery, where it stayed for two years.
Once upon a time there was an AI named Abraham. Enigmatic and unpredictable, it lived between superficial intellectual musing and the earnest pursuit of spiritual truth. Spawned from the loins of an art project, it was a testament to early twenty-first century internet visions of a humanist god. Inspired by Gene Kogan’s ideas for Abraham.ai.
The Island of Seawolves teaser becomes The Island of the Simulated Wolves, by way of AI. Remix is already a key part of internet culture; with these tools it becomes trivial to make endless variations of anything. Credit assignment and reward systems that incentivise collaboration are badly needed. Made with Stable Diffusion, Photoshop and EbSynth.
What happens to a DAO long after all its humans are gone? Story, voice and motion capture by Freeman Murray. 3-D scanned ceramics and animation by Vanessa Rosa, in Blender, Stable Diffusion and EbSynth.
The first animation I made with a text-to-image model, using CLIP + VQGAN and first-order motion, back when these models had only just started producing anything interesting. Made with help from Gene Kogan, on Advadnoun’s notebook.
GANs trained in 2020 and 2021 on sacred spaces and corridors, gathered from Flickr, Same.energy and my own photographs, combined with found footage of Isadora Duncan and music by Alfred Brendel. Runway’s green-screen model merged the dancer and her shadow into the generated scene.
BAIFF, Burano Artificial Intelligence Film Festival, 2026
BAIFF, Burano Artificial Intelligence Film Festival, 2024
BAIFF, Burano Artificial Intelligence Film Festival, 2025
Sofia
Shapeshift Festival, 2026
Shapeshift Festival, 2025
Sofia World Film Festival, 2025
Campos dos Goytacazes
Experimental Brasil, 2026
Experimenta Brasil, 2025
Beijing
AI Artist, 2026
AI Artist, 2024
Shanghai
AI Artist, 2026
AI Artist, 2024
Cannes
MetaCannes Film3 Festival, 2026
Cannes World Film Festival, 2024
Seoul
Seoul International AI Film Festival, 2025
Korea International AI Film Festival, 2024
Kyiv
New Technologies AI Film Festival, 2025
A screening in a bomb shelter, 2025
New York
International Avant-Garde Film Awards, 2024
AMT International Film Festival, 2024
Miami
Chroma Art Film Festival, 2024
Chroma Art Film Festival, 2023
Mexico City
Las Flores Web3 Film Festival, 2024
FICMA, Festival Internacional de Cine con Medios Alternativos, 2024
Bangkok
Bangkok Movie Awards, 2025
Dubai
Dubai City Film Festival, 2025
Bali
Bali International AI Film Festival, 2025
Tianjin
Tianjin International Academic Film Festival, 2025
Bacolod
Bakunawa Fest, 2025
San Francisco
Dasein AI Film Festival, 2025
Netherlands
AI Video Awards, Dutch AI Week, 2025
São Paulo
FILE, Electronic Language International Festival, 2026
Opole
CineTech Future Fest, 2024
Monza
Monza Film Fest, 2024
Timișoara
The Galactic Imaginarium Film Festival, 2024
Boulder
Moondance International Film Festival, 2025
Sydney
Reel Intelligence, 2025
Brisbane
Qld XR Festival, 2024
Caserta
AA29 Video Project, 2024
Berlin
ORION International Film Festival, 2025
Austin
Austin AI Film Festival, 2025
Reykjavík
YETI FilmFest, 2024
Reims
Red Movie Awards, 2024
Feuchtwangen
Beyond Filmfestival, 2025
Larissa
Larissa Lumina AI Short Film Festival, 2024
Vienna, Budapest and Bratislava
Blue Danube Film Festival, 2024
Bangalore
Bengaluru International Short Film Festival, 2024
Toulouse
ONED Art and Experimental Film Festival, 2024
Chicago
Chicago AI Film Festival, 2024
Chiapas
Cosmo Genetics Film Festival, 2024
Queensland
Tiny Mountains Festival, 2024
Belgrade
AI Film Fest Serbia, 2025
Seattle
The Seattle AI Film Festival, 2025
Elche
ROS Film Festival, 2023
Bombay Beach
Mars College AI Film Festival, 2023
Salvador
Artelligent, 2025
Rio de Janeiro
Meta Gallery, 2025
46 cities. Tap a pin to see which festival showed the film there.
The record
Every festival, film by film
Opens on a selection of the festivals that mattered. Awards lists the prizes,
Everything the whole circuit, or pick a year.
Each line links to the festival, and to the film’s own page there where one exists.
Brief History of Consciousness in the Simulation. Official selection, AI-driven films, Miami
Screenings
Where they were shown
Seoul, China, a bomb shelter in Ukraine, New York, Sofia, the desert. Click any
picture to see it large.
Receiving the Global South Prize for Little Martians: Dear Human, My Muse. Korea International AI Film Festival, 25 October 2024.On stage in Seoul, with the prize.The panel of award winners, Korea International AI Film Festival.The Global South Prize: Little Martians: Dear Human, My Muse, Vanessa Rosa.A full auditorium at the AI Artist festival, China.The awards stage, AI Artist festival, China.Verdelis on the screen, AI Artist festival, China.A screening inside a bomb shelter in Ukraine, 2025.Artelligent, Salvador, Bahia. Photograph by Rafael Martins.Artelligent, Salvador, Bahia. Photograph by Hugo Lourenço.Artelligent, Salvador, Bahia. Photograph by Hugo Lourenço.The programme on the wall, Artelligent, Salvador. Photograph by Hugo Lourenço.The film on a festival stage.A screening room.The filmmakers on stage at the AMT International Film Festival, New York.At the AMT International Film Festival, New York.Official selection card, BAIFF, the Burano Artificial Intelligence Film Festival.Verdelis & Mycos in the Human vs Machine programme, Shapeshift Festival, Sofia.Verdelis & Mycos at Bakunawa Fest, Bacolod.Dear Human, My Muse announced by Shapeshift Festival.The work at NeurIPS.
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Receiving the Global South Prize for Little Martians: Dear Human, My Muse. Korea International AI Film Festival, 25 October 2024.On stage in Seoul, with the prize.The panel of award winners, Korea International AI Film Festival.The Global South Prize: Little Martians: Dear Human, My Muse, Vanessa Rosa.A full auditorium at the AI Artist festival, China.The awards stage, AI Artist festival, China.Verdelis on the screen, AI Artist festival, China.A screening inside a bomb shelter in Ukraine, 2025.Artelligent, Salvador, Bahia. Photograph by Rafael Martins.Artelligent, Salvador, Bahia. Photograph by Hugo Lourenço.Artelligent, Salvador, Bahia. Photograph by Hugo Lourenço.The programme on the wall, Artelligent, Salvador. Photograph by Hugo Lourenço.The film on a festival stage.A screening room.The filmmakers on stage at the AMT International Film Festival, New York.At the AMT International Film Festival, New York.Official selection card, BAIFF, the Burano Artificial Intelligence Film Festival.Verdelis & Mycos in the Human vs Machine programme, Shapeshift Festival, Sofia.Verdelis & Mycos at Bakunawa Fest, Bacolod.Dear Human, My Muse announced by Shapeshift Festival.The work at NeurIPS.
