This year for the first time, filmmakers applying to IDFA were asked to declare AI use in their submission forms. It turns out that most of these projects share a zeitgeist theme: end times. In this panel, we dive into the creative and political implications of AI use in documentary films to interrogate oppressive systems and apocalyptic narratives that themselves rely on AI to accelerate destruction. How do filmmakers and citizens fight back? 

In Morro Grande, Isabel Joffily and Rita Toledo use AI to generate photographic fabulations as they trace a 90’s Brazilian rural punk movement fighting pesticidal agriculture in a landscape where farmworkers live in perilous conditions, psychologically and existentially.  In The Recce, Daniel Mann asks AI to visualize the fieldnotes from a 1904 British expedition to Uganda, capturing cinema’s—and AI’s—entanglement with colonial imaginaries.  Apocalypse Early Warning System, a DocLab project from Kyle McDonald, is a real-time dashboard that watches private jets as an early warning signal for an imminent nuclear apocalypse.  

Researcher Michaela Pnacek(ova) will introduce the project European AI Commons – Shaping AI for the Creative and Cultural Industries (EAiCCI), bringing Europe’s creative communities together to shape a transparent, ethical, and European-by-design AI Commons that empowers creative practice and serves the public good through shared knowledge, open resources, and European alternatives. 

Moderator: Kat Cizek (Artistic Director, Co-Creation Studio at MIT Open Documentary Lab) 

Speakers: Isabel Joffily, Rita Toledo (Directors, Morro Grande), Daniel Mann (Director, The Recce), Kyle McDonald (Director, Apocalypse Early Warning System), Michaela Pnacek(ova) (XR Creator, Researcher, Norwegian University of Science and Technology)