Artefact AI Film Festival 2026: Rules, Prizes, Past Winners and How to Enter by December 2

It is the third edition of the Paris festival run by Artefact, a data and AI consultancy, and mk2, the arthouse cinema group. The theme is "(Dis)Connection". Films can run up to 314 seconds, each person can enter one film, and you have to use at least one generative AI tool in each of three stages: pre-production, production and post-production. The jury presidents are Olivier Nakache and Éric Toledano, the directors of Intouchables. The official site lists no entry fee. This page covers the rules, the dates, who won the last two editions and what those wins tell you about this jury.

Key dates for the third edition

Per the official festival site, submissions opened on September 2, 2026 and close on December 2, 2026. An audience vote runs from December 9, 2026 to January 13, 2027, the jury deliberates in January 2027, and the awards ceremony takes place in February 2027 at mk2 Bibliothèque in Paris. No exact ceremony day has been published yet.

That calendar matches the second edition almost day for day. In 2025 submissions ran from September 2 to December 3, the public vote from December 10 to January 14, and winners were announced on February 12, 2026. If the pattern holds, finalists will know they are in the audience vote by early December, and the ceremony will land in the second week of February.

The deadline sits three days before the Curious Refuge holiday competition (December 6) and the week before the Jaipur World AI Cinema Competition (December 5), so plan your December entries around it.

Prizes: €13,000 in cash and a national cinema run

The official site lists four prizes for 2026, with more "to be announced":

Grand Prize: €10,000 for the best film of the festival, plus a 30-second version of the winning film screened in all mk2 theaters for one week. That is a real theatrical placement, short as it is.

Jury Award: €1,000 for an original piece of filmmaking or cinematography.

Audience Award: €1,000 for the most popular film in the online vote.

AI Award: €1,000 for the best or most innovative use of artificial intelligence.

That makes €13,000 in announced cash. Last year the festival added prizes beyond the core four. The second edition gave a French Touch Prize to Field Notes by Ariel Kotzer and a €1,000 Paris Aéroport Prize to Le Temps d'un Souvenir by Alix André-Kellershohn, and the Jury Prize was split ex aequo between two films. The Artefact Best Use of AI prize in that edition came with support for developing the winner's next film. Expect a similar mix in February 2027.

The rules, line by line

The rules page has three criteria and a short FAQ.

Open to everyone worldwide. There is no country, age or experience restriction. First-time creators and working directors compete in the same pool.

Maximum 314 seconds. That is 5 minutes and 14 seconds, a nod to pi that the festival has used since its first edition in 2024. Credits count toward your running time, so cut to 5:00 of picture and leave room.

Generative AI in all three production phases. You must use at least one Gen AI tool in pre-production, one in production and one in post-production. The rules give examples for each. Pre-production: screenplay, character development, dialogue, storyboard, musical inspiration. Production: image generation, 2D and 3D models, video generation, animation, sets and backgrounds. Post-production: editing, overlays, mixing, color grading, effects, sound, voice and music generation.

One film per person. The FAQ says each candidate can submit only one application through their personal portal. You can withdraw an entry from your dashboard any time before the deadline. After December 2, entries are locked for judging.

The festival also asks for a production log. Artefact's June 22, 2026 announcement says every entrant must submit a log detailing how they used AI tools. Keep notes from day one rather than reconstructing them at the end.

Who is judging: Nakache and Toledano

Artefact announced the jury presidents on June 22, 2026 at the VivaTech trade show in Paris. Olivier Nakache and Éric Toledano are the French directing duo behind Intouchables (2011), Le Sens de la fête (2017) and Hors normes (2019), and they created the Arte series En Thérapie. Their films are character comedies and dramas built on people who should not get along. They are not effects directors.

That matters for how you pitch your film. Artefact's announcement says the festival wants AI used as a tool for storytelling and emotion, not as a technical demonstration. François Brogi, head of Artefact 3000, says on the festival site that this is above all a film festival where the emotion and the story come first. A five-minute showreel of impressive shots with no character in it is unlikely to win this room.

The past two presidents point the same way. Jean-Pierre Jeunet (Amélie) chaired the first edition in 2024 and Cédric Klapisch (L'Auberge espagnole) chaired the second. All three are auteurs known for human stories with a strong visual voice.

What won before, and why

First edition, 2024. The theme was "Reality(s)", entries closed before October 1, and the festival drew 267 entries from 35 countries. The Grand Prix went to La Vie Quand T'ai Mort by Raphaël Frydman, a surreal, funny look at life and death that mixes animation and virtual reality. mk2 has since moved to produce a feature film directed by Frydman, according to Artefact. The prize led to a real production deal, not just a laurel.

Second edition, 2025 to 2026. The theme was "(Dis)play", Klapisch chaired a jury that included director Paul Trillo, ARTE president Bruno Patino, mk2 CEO Elisha Karmitz and first-edition winners Junie Lau and Raphaël Frydman, and the festival received 265 submissions from 52 countries, with 20 films in the final competition. The winners, announced February 12, 2026:

Grand Prize: The Cinema that Never Was by Mark Wachholz. Jury Prize, ex aequo: Hard Dayzzz by Max De Donato and Roped by Cokau Lab. Public Prize: Arrow by Jiaze Li. Artefact Best Use of AI: La Tisseuse d'Ombre by Anne Horel. French Touch Prize: Field Notes by Ariel Kotzer. Paris Aéroport Prize: Le Temps d'un Souvenir by Alix André-Kellershohn.

Klapisch said the first thing that struck him was the films' "relationship to surrealism." Karmitz said artists now treat AI as a subject in its own right, not only as a tool.

The Grand Prize winner shows what that means in practice. Curious Refuge describes The Cinema that Never Was as an AI video essay about the films that were never made. The film is about what AI images are: pictures of things that never existed. Wachholz, a Berlin-based filmmaker, has said in an interview with Agenda Digitale that he started from the music, wanting a trailer-like structure, and wrote the voiceover with help from ChatGPT. The same film also won the top prize at the OMNI International AI Film Festival, whose jury was chaired by George Miller, and placed second at the 2025 Reply AI Film Festival, according to Medientage and Holywater. A strong idea about the medium travelled across several juries.

Reading the 2026 theme: (Dis)Connection

The festival describes the theme as the new connections between cinema, AI, contemporary creation and digital experiences, and the shifting line between human and machine, real and virtual, author and tool.

Three readings fit both the theme and this jury. A human story about connection or its loss: two people who cannot reach each other, a family split across distance, someone talking to a machine because nobody else is there. That is Nakache and Toledano territory. A film about the medium, in the line of last year's Grand Prize: what it means that a model can show you a memory that never happened, or a face that belongs to no one. A formal experiment where the disconnection is in the image itself, such as glitches, broken continuity or a story told across mismatched styles, used on purpose and tied to a character.

Avoid the literal version. A film about a robot learning to love, or a city of screens where nobody looks up, is the first idea most entrants will have.

A production plan that satisfies the three-phase rule

The three-phase rule is easy to meet, but you need to show it in your log. One workable stack:

Pre-production: draft the script and dialogue with Claude or ChatGPT, then build a look bible and storyboard frames in Midjourney or Flux. Record which ideas came from you and which from the tool.

Production: generate shots in Runway, Kling, Veo, Sora, Luma or Hailuo, using reference frames for character consistency. Note the tool and prompt approach for each sequence.

Post-production: AI voice in ElevenLabs, music in Suno or Udio, upscaling in Topaz, and AI-assisted color or cleanup. Any one of these satisfies the third phase.

Two practical notes. Many festivals now ask for a production journal, including WAIFF London and WAIFF Los Angeles, so one log written properly serves several entries. And because the festival screens a 30-second cut in mk2 cinemas if you win the Grand Prize, plan a 30-second version that works on a big screen: one clear image, one idea, no small text.

Where else to send the same film

A film under 314 seconds fits several other open contests. Cine Prague AI Film Festival pays a $1,000 Grand Prix for films up to 5 minutes and closes November 28. The World AI Film Festival in Cannes takes direct entries from creators in countries without a WAIFF regional edition, at €15 until November 15, rising to €60 by its February 15, 2027 close. The Hollywood AI Short Film Awards accept films up to 22 minutes and close January 11, 2027. The World Film Festival in Cannes runs a Best AI Film award with a March 30, 2027 deadline.

Check each festival's premiere rules before entering. Artefact's rules page does not mention a premiere requirement, and most AI festivals do not ask for one. The contest cards below link to each listing in our directory. Subscribe at the bottom of this page for an email when new AI film contests open.