AI Film Festival Japan names winners from 730 entries

The second AI Film Festival Japan named its winners at a ceremony in Tokyo on November 1 and closed the next day, after the organizer said more than 730 works arrived from over 60 countries and regions. From that pool it selected 68 official selections and 21 finalists, then split the awards across film, animation, experimental and music categories.

Ayano Kotakari, a young creator at Nippon Television's production company NTV AX-ON, won the top award in the festival's new AI film music and score category, Nippon Television's news division reported. Her entry, "Return to the Womb," sets hand-built piano melodies against AI-generated dissonance for a set clip called "Laundromat," the festival's finalist listing says.

The first festival ran in Tokyo in November 2025. The 2026 edition added a category and stretched to three days, and the entries skewed East Asian and short.

What Is the AI Film Festival Japan?

The AI Film Festival Japan (AIFJ) is an annual event run by AI Film Japan, whose representative is Kazunori Kurimoto. The 2026 edition ran October 31 to November 2 at Tokyo Innovation Base in the Marunouchi district, with Alibaba Cloud, CapCut and ElevenLabs as official partners, and put the awards ceremony on the middle day, November 1.

The 21 finalists spread across four categories: eight in AI Movie, six in AI Animation, four in AI Creative and three in the new AI Film Music & Score, the organizer's release says. Most entries ran about five to 10 minutes, mostly short films and animation, and Japan, China and South Korea together made up more than half of the submissions, per Nippon Television's report.

Seedance, ByteDance's video model, was the most widely used tool across the submitted works, with the music generator Suno second, the same report says. Among the speakers the festival named are two-time Academy Award winner Phil Tippett, former MAPPA director Makoto Kimura and Twitch co-founder Kevin Lin, ascii.jp reported.

The music category runs in reverse from a normal score: creators score an official clip of about three minutes that the festival supplies (the music section). And the Best Use of Voice award sponsored by ElevenLabs treats rights clearance and performer consent as a mandatory eligibility requirement rather than a bonus, the organizer says. A subtitle system from the 100BANCH-based project Koto-no-Hashi generated captions for 33 of the works in seven languages, the project said.

The winner's employer, NTV AX-ON, is the production arm of Nippon Television, whose news division carried the win.

The festival has closed, but the organizer keeps a record of past award-winning works in its archive.

The 2026 official selections and finalists stay listed at aifilm.jp; the next edition has not been announced.