Last year, we showcased films created with neural networks in the now nearly legendary special section Kiberglaz. This year, entries involving artificial intelligence in one form or another make up a good half of the competition. Soon, AI-generated video will appear as authentic as “real” cinema, and the choice between a documentary and a fiction lens will become purely stylistic for filmmakers.

Will this revolutionary development erode our trust in the documentary? How will the boundary between documentary and fiction imagery shift? What will become of all the previously established movements and genres—will they be transformed by new technology, or preserved in their traditional form? Will 2025 be the last year of experimental cinema, as one colleague quipped, or, given everything unfolding around us, perhaps even the last episode of our “film” altogether?

This year’s In Silico Competition, now in its 15th edition, presents 20 films. Over the years, this section has featured both established and emerging artists. Among this year’s participants are many familiar names: Anaïs Ibert, Nikita Spiridonov, Christoph Girardet, Christine Lucy Latimer, Giulia Magno, Carlos Velandia and Angelica Restrepo—all of whom have contributed to the experimental competition over the recent years—as well as two filmmakers, Nicolas Schmidt and Jörn Staeger, who showed their works in the very first In Silico back in 2011.

Andrea Gatopoulos, who last year led Kiberglaz as tutor and contributor and previously attended In Silico as a producer, now joins the competition for the first time as a director. Mikhail Basov, former participant and jury member in the experimental film section, presents his retrospective at the Festival this year, while another of our past entrants, Platon Infante, now serves on the experimental jury.

Growing complexity and unpredictability of the world, nostalgia for both past and future, fear, disappointment, hope—these themes resonate throughout the programme, while those left off-screen echo through their very absence. Like a children’s colouring book, the In Silico programme offers a dotted outline one may trace in the imagination—or leave as it is.

Mikhail Zheleznikov