I watched all the submissions for the Cinema Shift Festival (June 5 Hot Docs Cinema, Toronto), and one thing surprised me: 34% of films deal with grief or loss. After noticing a couple of films with a grandparent theme, I dug deeper. We’ve got some amazing data from the submissions, and I am not claiming this tells the whole story of AI filmmaking. But it tells our story - and I think that’s worth sharing.
Our average submitter’s age is 43.7, and 28% of them are older than 50. We had a couple of filmmakers over 60, and for some, this was their first movie. I also talked with some of them, and they are more than curious to explore creative ways to use AI tools and tell their stories.
27% of submissions came from women, and 73% from men. When we analyzed the emotional themes across all submissions, we found that 𝟯𝟰% of films deal with 𝗴𝗿𝗶𝗲𝗳 𝗼𝗿 𝗹𝗼𝘀𝘀, 31% explore memory and nostalgia, and 6% tell stories centred on 𝗴𝗿𝗮𝗻𝗱𝗽𝗮𝗿𝗲𝗻𝘁𝘀. This wasn’t what I expected, but it shows clearly what people are using these tools for.
But what connects them, and we saw that from personal statements, is that movies were a therapeutic space for many (33%).
Among those who shared their professional background, 𝟴𝟱% 𝗰𝗮𝗺𝗲 𝗳𝗿𝗼𝗺 𝗳𝗶𝗹𝗺 & 𝗧𝗩, and what’s interesting is that 7% comes from the academic world. As someone who loves reading academic papers on AI filmmaking (it is such a new category), I loved it, and I am eagerly awaiting new papers.
Not everything was necessarily “happy”; 75% of filmmakers made movies by themselves. When I made my AI zombie horror animated comedy, I did everything myself and missed collaboration. You win some, you lose some.
When talking about genres, dramas lead (25.6%), followed by SciFi (16.7%) - we did have some comedies, and they were truly interesting to watch because comedy is hard, and some of them were exceptional.
Some of these films you’ll see on June 5 at the Cinema Shift Festival in Toronto, Hot Docs Cinema.
Get tickets:
https://luma.com/CinemaShiftFestival2026