# Edgar Pêra's 'Asphalt Guerrilla' Uses AI Imagery to Blur Fact and Fiction at Locarno 2025

_General · published 2026-08-08_

Portuguese auteur Edgar Pêra premieres 'Asphalt Guerrilla' (Guerrilha no Asfalto) Out of Competition at the 79th Locarno Film Festival, blending documentary history, fiction, and deliberately deployed AI-generated images. The film revisits Portugal's radical FP-25 armed organization of the 1980s — drawing from a book by former member Manuel Ricardo de Sousa — while simultaneously serving as a meta-commentary on guerrilla filmmaking itself. Pêra co-wrote the screenplay with Rodrigo Areias, with cinematography by Jorge Quintela and editing by João Mora.

Pêra describes the film as a mirror of contemporary society's inability to distinguish real from fabricated, a concern he links directly to AI's role in manufacturing false imagery and news. Rather than hiding his use of AI-generated visuals, he embeds deliberate clues within the film, turning the technology's tendency to blur reality into both a formal device and a critique. "This fusion, or blur, of fiction and reality is something that I like, but it's also something that I must fight against," he told THR.

## Sources
- [Hollywood Reporter](https://www.hollywoodreporter.com/movies/movie-news/asphalt-guerrilla-film-interview-locarno-2026-ai-radicalism-1236668855/)
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