Dreams of Violets, a feature-length narrative film completely generated by AI, will screen at the Tribeca Festival June 10.
Produced and directed by first-time filmmakers and tech entrepreneur brothers Ash and Pooya Koosha, the film is a fictional dramatization of events around the massacre of Iranian civilians last January. International organizations have put the death toll at north of 7,000 as protests and state violence unfolded amid a communications blackout. Every image and person in the film is generated using AI video tools and based on journalistic reports, photographs and eyewitness accounts, the announcement said.
The film is the the first project from the Kooshas’ new called Fountain 0. Former top NBC executive Tom Rogers is executive chairman of the startup.
“This is a very personal story to us, having experienced brutality in Iran. The brutality that came about as a result of the January protests in Iran hit a real nerve,” said Ash Koosha, CEO of Fountain 0 and producer of the film. “We wanted our first Fountain 0 film to be dedicated to something that we felt the world needed to know more about and understand the human toll of far better.” There has been “extremely little first-hand journalism on these events, and the internet has been shut down.”
The brothers were born in Iran and left in 2009.
The announcement comes as talks to end the U.S.-Iran conflict drag on and amid ongoing repression by Iran’s hard line government even. Jafar Panahi, Iranian director and 2025 Palm d’Or winner for It Was Just An Accident, was recently summoned to a court hearing and retrial for “propaganda activity against the regime.” He had condemned the Iranian Islamic Republic for murdering student protesters in Tehran in January.
Dreams Of Violets (trailer below) is one of the few full-length, live-action films completely generated by AI to hit a big festival and a ticket buying audience. AI and deepfake-generated biographical drama Putin made a splash when it premiered at Cannes in 2024. In that film, the Russian president’s face was superimposed onto an actor.
Ash Koosha is based in London. Pooya Koosha, co-founder of Fountain 0 and producer/post- producer of the film, is in Menlo Park, where he is CTO and co-founder of Claigid. He said he expects each subsequent Fountain 0 films to improve on its AI production techniques. It has two other films in production. The company’s funding sources have not been disclosed.
Ash Koosha acknowledged that the concept of a fully AI film is understandably scary to the entertainment community but stressed the advantages for “the many independent filmmakers and would be independent filmmakers, whose biggest barrier is access to money to make their films.” Dreams Of Violets was produced in about two months for just $2k, the announcement said.
He said Fountain 0 will “actively seek top writer and director talent.”
The brothers first crossed AI and entertainment through music. Ash Koosha, also a composer, in 2018 released an album Called Return 0 that featured songs by Yona, an AI pop star Pooya Koosha created at another company the brothers founded called Auxuman – for “auxiliary human.”
Dreams of Violets trailer:
