“The First Honest Day” by Nikolay Shestak wins the $450,000 Grand Prix at the first artificial intelligence film festival in Astana

The inaugural Astana Artificial Intelligence Film Festival (AAIFF 2026) was held on 1–3 October 2026 in Astana, Kazakhstan, as part of AI Month. As the Kazakh news agency Kazinform reports, the first event of its kind in the world marked a turning point: cinema created with the help of artificial intelligence is turning into a separate branch of the global film industry.

The festival received 8,067 applications from 125 countries, of which 25 films were selected for the final competition. The international jury included heavyweight names — from the former Director-General of UNESCO and former French Minister of Culture, Audrey Azoulay, to Ma Ping, dean of the Artificial Intelligence Research Institute at China Film Group, and Wang Hao, deputy dean of the School of Animation at the Beijing Film Academy. Also on the jury were entrepreneur and investor Balaji Srinivasan, as well as Li Long, general manager of BytePlus for the Middle East, Africa, India, Turkey and CIS.

The total prize and investment fund reached $2 million — half of it, from the Freedom Shapagat Corporate Foundation of Freedom Holding Corp., was distributed among the winners, while the rest represents investment capital for promising AI teams. In the main thematic programme “The Future Worth Living In,” the $450,000 Grand Prix went to Latvian director Nikolay Shestak for the film “The First Honest Day.” The former actor, who has been directing films for about four years and working with the help of AI for two years, triumphed against international competition. Second place, with $200,000, went to Indian director Abhik Banerjee for “Sitara,” while third, with $100,000, went to Spanish director Ernest Desumbila for “Looking for Perseida” — a film he made in only 10 days.

The special categories, with $50,000 each, distributed further awards: Best Character — Myrzakhan Zhumakhan from Kazakhstan for the comedy “IT WAS JUST A JOKE”; Best Story — the Chinese team 2xLabs for “The Last Span,” inspired by an ancient Chinese painting on the theme of separation and reunion; Best Visual — Jacopo Zanetti from Italy for “What’s the Job?”; Best Direction — Jacopo Reale for “The Fracture”; and Best Concept — Zachary London for “Pomegranate.”

The finalist films were shown on the big screen at Chaplin Cinema, in the MEGA Silk Way shopping centre, on 2 and 3 October. The festival’s co-founder and creative director, Aizat Kussainov, said the most interesting thing about AI cinema today is not the technology itself, but what creators are achieving with it.