AI New Orleans
SHORTS

The week before November 1st, Creole families across South Louisiana still drive out to the cemeteries and whitewash the tombs, so the dead can be seen clearly for one more year before La Toussaint, All Saints' Day. October 31 here is not costume night first. It's the eve of that upkeep, a night about tending to what came before you, not erasing it.

That's the posture this festival takes toward artificial intelligence in film: the tool doesn't lead the procession and it doesn't get a say in what the film is about. It's welcome to fall in step once the real work, a story, a voice, a reason to have made the thing at all, is already moving. In a jazz funeral, the family and the band open the street; everybody else who falls in after them is the second line, uninvited, unranked, and not the point of the parade. AI New Orleans SHORTS only wants submissions where the film is still the point.

We take short films of any genre, from any country, that can show their work: somewhere in the writing, the image-making, the voice, the score, or the cut, a machine had its hands on the film, and the person submitting it can say plainly where. This happens once, in one room, in Marrero, on the West Bank, a working stretch of the metro that doesn't show up on the postcards. We are not a showcase for demos and we are not a novelty booth. We are a room with chairs in it.

On October 31, 2026, at 3:00 PM, we're bringing the selected films to a room at DBA Business Centre, 4657 Westbank Expressway, Marrero, Louisiana. Expect a screening of the program, a Q&A afterward with whichever directors made the trip, and unstructured time after that to stand around and talk, filmmakers and audience together. No formal mixer. Just a room that stays open.