Piotr Winiewicz’s ‘About a Hero’ blends artificial intelligence with the work of German filmmaker Werner Herzog, featuring a screenplay generated by AI.
Few things today evolve faster than news about artificial intelligence. Keeping up – let alone understanding and evaluating these developments – has become a daunting task. This year’s Thessaloniki International Documentary Festival (TiDF), running from March 6-16, aims to shed light on this rapidly and profoundly transformative phenomenon with a curated selection of thought-provoking films.
Among the highlights of the festival’s tribute, “AI, an Inevitable Intelligence,” is “About a Hero” (2024) by Copenhagen-based artist and filmmaker Piotr Winiewicz. With permission from German director Werner Herzog, Winiewicz challenges Herzog’s claim that “a computer won’t be able to create a film as good as mine for at least another 4,500 years.” He trains an AI model with Herzog’s work to generate a screenplay, blending a fictional narrative starring actress Vicky Krieps with interviews featuring artists, philosophers and scientists on art, creativity and originality in the AI era.
In “Flash Wars: Autonomous Weapons, AI and the Future of Warfare” (2024), Vienna-based filmmaker Daniel Andrew Wunderer investigates AI-driven military technology, from kamikaze drones to robotic patrol dogs in New York. Experts assess AI’s role in modern warfare and warn of its potential risks, examining its ethical, legal and strategic implications.
Tonje Hessen Schei’s “iHuman” (2019), structured like a political thriller, explores AI’s intersection with power and surveillance. The film features perspectives from tech optimist Jurgen Schmidhuber, technology journalist Kara Swisher, and human rights lawyer Philip Alston, posing an unsettling question: Will AI serve progress or enable dystopian control?
Henri Poulain’s “In the Belly of AI” (2024) probes AI’s environmental and human costs, from energy-hungry data centers to millions of workers preparing datasets for Big Tech’s algorithms. The documentary critiques Silicon Valley’s embrace of “longtermism” – a pseudo-philosophy that claims positively shaping the distant future should be a key moral priority. In practice, it serves as an alibi for some of the world’s wealthiest individuals to shape humanity’s future according to their own personal interests and agendas.
In “The Hexagonal Hive and a Mouse in a Maze” (2024), Oscar-winning actress Tilda Swinton and Bartek Dziadosz travel from the UK to Bangladesh, West Africa and North America, exploring the experiences of young people and the evolving role of education across the past, present and future. Drawing insights from scientists, farmers, philosophers, educators and children, this engaging film highlights the importance of lifelong curiosity in an increasingly complex world.
“The Biography of a Software” (2024), a multimedia project by visual artist George Drivas and composer Melina Paxinos, examines AI’s evolution through film, photography and music. It follows a man who, having lost his memory, relies on AI to reconstruct his past.
Beyond screenings, the festival features a masterclass on AI’s role in art, a special publication with essays from academics, artists, tech experts, and journalists, and an AI-assisted edition of its official magazine, First Shot.
A visual installation titled “LAUREN: Anyone Home?” by UCLA professor Lauren Lee McCarthy, merges art and AI at the MOMus-Experimental Center for the Arts.
For more information, visit the festival website.
