Reply AI Film Festival: Robert Gaudette's Grok, Nano Banana & Seedance Short Beats 3,000 Entries

Robert Gaudette's A Face Only A Mother Could Love won the Reply AI Film Festival 2026 in Venice on September 6, 2026, beating more than 3,000 entries.

Reply, the Turin-based technology group behind the competition, announced the results in a press release dated September 7, 2026, distributed by Business Wire. The ceremony, organised with Mastercard, took place on the Lido alongside the 83rd Venice International Film Festival. Oscar-winning director Gabriele Salvatores chaired a jury that also included Rob Minkoff and Catherine Hardwicke.

Gaudette, a Canadian filmmaker, made A Face Only A Mother Could Love with Grok, Nano Banana and ByteDance's Seedance, according to the release. The AI-generated short follows Marcel, a solitary Parisian dancer born with a facial disfigurement, whose life changes when a woman approaches him. Reply says those tools were the only viable way to film the script without a budget, cast or crew. Gaudette said in the release that he began the short as an experiment and never intended to submit it to festivals.

Second place went to Le Drip by American filmmakers Alex Naghavi and Ezra Li, an animated short that shows a fish's last day on Earth as moving oil paintings. Third went to Centenarian Kindergarten by Chinese collective 2xLabs, set in a childless 2090. Centenarian Kindergarten also won the AI for Good Award, presented with the International Telecommunication Union. The release names no tools for either film.

Website by Jiaze Li won two prizes: the Reply AI Studios Grand Prix for technical use of AI, and the Community Award, decided by an online public vote across the ten finalists. China News Service reported on September 15, 2026 that the 11-minute science fiction film debuted on Bilibili in April and has passed 5.61 million views. Per CNS, Website combines 3D production and virtual web design with multiple AI models, which it does not name, and Li keeps his independent productions to around 50,000 yuan, about $7,000, per film.

The sources differ on two points. Reply counts more than 3,000 submissions from 76 countries, while CNS says more than 3,100. Reply's release calls Li an English filmmaker; CNS calls Website a Chinese film and says Li works for WPP in London.

A special mention went to The Child of the Sea by Spanish filmmaker Ibai Abad. The release credits a hybrid workflow pairing Magnific with human-led editing for the film's stop-motion look.

This was the festival's third edition, and Reply's festival page lists 2025 winner Jacopo Reale on this year's jury. According to the Reply Challenges page, the top three films receive 8,000, 5,000 and 2,000 euros. Salvatores said he arrived sceptical and left "with renewed hope."

For creators, the winner's stack is the takeaway. By Reply's account, a jury that includes working directors gave first prize to a film built with three commercial AI tools and no cast, crew or budget, which could encourage solo creators to enter next time.

The full winners list is on Reply's festival page, which does not say where the winning shorts can be streamed; Website is on Bilibili, per CNS. Reply has not announced dates for a 2027 edition on the pages read for this story.