AI feature A Woman Asleep enters Cottbus main competition

Vikki Bardot's AI-generated feature A Woman Asleep has been selected for the main competition of Germany's FilmFestival Cottbus, which runs November 3-8.

Screen Daily reported the selection on October 16 and describes the film as believed to be the first AI-generated feature picked for the main competition of an established international film festival. It is one of ten titles in the competition, according to the festival's own program, which the festival files as its Feature Film Competition.

A Woman Asleep is an 80-minute English-language film built from a semi-autobiographical screenplay by Bardot, Türkiye Today reports. It is an edit of about 50,000 shots, and every visual and scene was generated through AI models Bardot trained and customized. The narration runs through an AI voice clone of Bardot's own voice, and the score is AI-generated through a custom experimental workflow.

Two years went into the film, and it is Bardot's feature debut. It is produced by Spongeworthy Studio, the Turkey-based company behind the 2025 AI-generated documentary Post Truth. Bardot co-produced and co-wrote the film with Spongeworthy's Alkan Avcıoğlu.

Bardot said the synthetic treatment was deliberate. "I intentionally used synthetic imagery and an emotionally flat AI clone of my own voice to reflect a society that is increasingly detached and becoming more machine-like," she said.

Cottbus festival director Bernd Buder said the film "captures the pitfalls of our information-saturated society with a refreshing blend of analytical acuity, a personal touch, and narrative composure."

The rest of the competition is heavy. It includes Kantemir Balagov's Butterfly Jam, which opened Cannes' Directors Fortnight, Levan Koguashvili's Guria, a Venice Spotlight title, Radu Jude's Diary of a Chambermaid, and Florin Şerban's You Don't Belong Here, which won Locarno's Golden Leopard.

A few AI-generated features have appeared in festival programs, mostly in special screenings and side sections, Screen Daily writes. A main-competition slot goes further than that.

The film's world premiere is at Turkey's Antalya Golden Orange Film Festival later this month, listed among its gala premieres for the 63rd edition running October 24-31. Turkish distributor Başka Sinema has picked up domestic theatrical rights and plans a spring 2027 release across 20 cities in Turkey, Variety reports.

If A Woman Asleep lands well with critics at Antalya and Cottbus, it gives other AI-first directors a festival placement to point to when they pitch, rather than a streaming-only release.

The film premieres at Antalya Golden Orange, running October 24-31, then competes at FilmFestival Cottbus from November 3-8.