Urbanworld Festival to Accept AI-Generated Films for 30th Anniversary, Launches ‘UrbanworldAI’ in Partnership with NY’s New School (EXCLUSIVE)

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By Corbin Bolies

Corbin Bolies

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As Hollywood continues to grapple with how to address AI’s pervasive presence, the Urbanworld Film Festival has chosen a full embrace.

The New York-based festival, dedicated to highlighting BIPOC stories—which has hosted talents like Ryan Coogler, Ava DuVernay, Nina DaCosta, and Cord Jefferson since its founding in 1997—is celebrating its 30th anniversary this October with “UrbanworldAI,” a new program developed in collaboration with the New School. This initiative will feature screenings of AI-generated films and shorts, alongside discussions and technology demonstrations of AI tools.

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Urbanworld is owned by founder and CEO Stacy Spikes, who also serves as co-founder and CEO of MoviePass, the movie-ticket subscription company he took over in 2021.

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The UrbanworldAI initiative will feature two pathways: an “education” track, pairing filmmakers, students, and creators with AI tools and methods to navigate this technological development, and a “showcase” track, incorporating films into the competition itself. These films will be evaluated less on technical aspects and more on Spikes’ “goosebump” approach, which assesses whether the stories connect emotionally.

The showcase will present an undetermined number of AI short films under 30 minutes and feature-length films over 50 minutes, with winners eligible for awards. The festival, taking place Oct. 14-18, will also add two new categories, Anime and Vertical, to spotlight the classic animation style and a growing sector of creator-driven content designed for mobile devices.

The aim, Spikes told Variety in an interview last week, is to counter industry pushback with curiosity, drawing parallels to past industry shifts like digital filmmaking or the evolution from VHS to DVDs to streaming. He contends this is preferable to the “oversimplifying” stance the industry has adopted toward AI, which he feels has wrongly cast the technology as a “boogeyman.”

“We’ve always believed it was our duty to our filmmaker communities to serve as a space where we could unite the technology, its users, and its creators, ensuring you stay as current as everyone else,” he said. “So there’s an obligation here, because as AI reduces costs, it will enable more people to create at levels previously unattainable, since filmmaking is a very costly pursuit.”

This move is relatively uncommon among major film festivals. While events like Cannes have prohibited AI films from their official lineups, pushing titles like “Hell Grind” into adjacent marketplaces, Tribeca stood out last week by screening the 75-minute AI-generated “Dreams of Violets.” Urbanworld’s acceptance signals a growing readiness within the industry to at least consider AI’s influence—even if audiences ultimately reject such content.

That’s why Spikes, who has openly discussed using AI in his own workflow and his desire for it to democratize filmmaking, is at ease with “being open to experimentation.” “Filmmaking is an extremely expensive endeavor, and I see an advantage in opening up those possibilities,” he said.

“Technology will keep advancing,” Spikes added. “I think it’s about being a platform that doesn’t exclude. The market will sort itself out. If it’s unpopular, people don’t like it, don’t care, the formats are poor, and it never looks right, guess what? It won’t succeed, and you won’t see us showcasing much of it. But I believe you should give things a chance to be seen.”

That doesn’t mean the creative community, which has largely resisted AI’s integration into traditional filmmaking, will necessarily welcome the decision warmly, as actors, writers, and directors remain divided on AI’s benefits. Many of Urbanworld’s alumni—including Coogler, DaCosta, and DuVernay—declined to comment on the decision via representatives, mainly due to production commitments, though Coogler and DaCosta have previously voiced concerns about AI’s “potential threat” or “worrying” nature.

Still, Spikes argued, Hollywood must be ready to engage with a technology that has seen studios strike deals to collaborate with it, license their characters for it, and have filmmakers increasingly lend their star power (and some funding) to support AI companies’ efforts.

“Why wouldn’t you want filmmakers to be aware of tools?” Spikes said. “It would be irresponsible to tell certain communities, ‘Don’t look over here.’ … If you consider what’s emerging from India and Asia, the risk is that our kids, students, and filmmakers fail to create or learn to use tools, and they get left behind.”

New School,

Stacy Spikes,

Urbanworld