Italian Filmmaker Jacopo Reale Wins Best Direction at 2026 Astana AI Film Festival for "The Fracture"

Italian filmmaker and AI creative director Jacopo Reale has won the Best Direction award at the inaugural Astana AI Film Festival 2026 for his AI-generated thriller "The Fracture." The film, produced by Animatix.ai and Labyrinth Studio AI — the Italian studio Reale co-founded with Giacomo Cannelli and Alessandro Risuleo — blends a generative image and video pipeline with traditional editing, sound design, and mixing. Set partly in the 16th century, the thriller follows a queen whose husband returns from war haunted by visions connected to a life centuries in the future, exploring themes of fractured memory and identity.

Reale, who spent more than 15 years as a film editor before turning to generative AI, described "The Fracture" as the most ambitious project his team had yet attempted, taking over a month to complete. He emphasized that despite the new toolset, the fundamentals of editing and narrative structure remain rooted in traditional filmmaking craft. The Astana AI Film Festival, billed as the world's largest international competition for AI-generated films, drew filmmakers from around the world for its first edition.