Sitara wins Outstanding Artistic Achievement at Astana AI Film Festival, earning $250,000 prize

Filmmaker Abhik Banerjee's AI short film Sitara, produced in collaboration with Tamasha Studios and Rollsound Studios, has taken second place at Kazakhstan's Astana AI Film Festival, earning the Outstanding Artistic Achievement award and a $250,000 prize. The competition drew 8,067 entries from 125 countries, with only 25 films advancing to the final international contest. The film follows Bittu, a sanitation worker whose modest dream — to be recognised by name and photographed by a stranger — unfolds through a surreal, humanist narrative.

For Tamasha Studios founder Mithilesh Bhagat, Sitara represents a deliberate strategy to explore AI-led storytelling across formats including micro-dramas, series, animation, and hybrid shoots, rather than treating the technology as a production shortcut. Banerjee echoed that ethos, framing the win as validation of AI's still-emerging creative potential: the question, he said, is not merely what AI can generate, but what kind of cinema becomes possible because these tools exist.