Cannes Lions 2026 Proved AI Needs Filmmakers More Than Filmmakers Need AI

Despite AI featuring in roughly 40% of award entries at Cannes Lions 2026 — double the prior year — only two of 34 Grand Prix were directly AI-related. Human Theory Films co-founder Emma Raz argues that this isn't a failure of the technology itself, but of how the industry has framed it: confusing AI production with filmmaking. The campaigns that resonated, such as AXA France's Three Words and Heineken's The Pub That Refused to Die, won on the strength of human insight and storytelling, not their use of tools.

Raz contends that many AI production companies have been built around technologists, AI artists, and designers rather than directors, editors, and cinematographers — people trained in the craft of guiding an audience through a story. Her central argument is that filmmaking has never been defined by the camera; every generation has adopted new tools while the underlying craft has remained constant. The future, she writes, belongs to filmmakers who understand AI as a tool without mistaking it for the craft itself.