Astana AI Film Festival Draws 8,067 Entries From 125 Countries

The Astana AI Film Festival (AAIFF 2026) has emerged as the world's largest international competition for artificial intelligence cinema, receiving 8,067 submissions from 125 countries.

Kazakhstan ranks second in the number of entries with 829 films, behind the United States, which leads with 1,395. India follows with 702 submissions, ahead of China (550) and South Korea (349). The top ten also includes the United Kingdom, Indonesia, Japan, Brazil, and France.

Nearly 40 per cent of the films — 3,138 entries — addressed the festival's central theme, 'The Future Worth Living In'. The remaining 4,929 works were submitted to the open competition, which spans 19 genres and carries no thematic restrictions.

AAIFF Board co-founder and chairman Almaz Zhali said the scale of response signals a shift in the field. "Just a few months ago, we were launching an international competition, and today we have received more than 8,000 entries from 125 countries," he said. "These are no longer isolated AI experiments. We are seeing full-fledged films, complex stories, characters and entire universes."

Co-founder and creative director Aizatulla Khussain noted that the festival's concept took shape in Astana in December 2025. "We can now state clearly that the Astana AI Film Festival is the world's largest AI film festival, both in terms of its $2 million funding and the number of submissions," he said. "We entered the market at the right time, just as technologies capable of producing real films began to emerge."

Entries will pass through multiple screening stages, starting with checks for plagiarism and low-quality AI-generated content. Films clearing the initial review will be assessed by specialists with backgrounds in cinema and visual storytelling. About 150 works will reach the senior selection team, which will choose 25 finalists.

The festival offers a prize pool of USD 1 million, comprising USD 750,000 for the main thematic programme and USD 250,000 across five open categories. The submissions have a combined runtime exceeding 100,000 minutes and were created by 4,756 filmmakers using more than 80 generative models.