'A Woman Asleep', a Turkish AI feature, is in FilmFestival Cottbus's main competition

Vikki Bardot's AI feature A Woman Asleep is in FilmFestival Cottbus's main competition, Nov 3 to 8. Its makers call it a first, but their own documentary Post Truth was in Fantasporto's main competition in March, and Cottbus has not yet published its program.

A Woman Asleep, an 80-minute AI-generated feature by Turkish artist Vikki Bardot, is in the main Feature Film Competition at the 36th FilmFestival Cottbus in Germany, Nov 3 to 8. It will be judged by the main jury and a FIPRESCI critics' jury alongside films shot the usual way.

Bardot, who also works as Gizem Avcioglu, made the images with models she trained on her own art practice, and a clone of her own voice narrates. She and co-writer Alkan Avcioglu of Spongeworthy Studio cut the film from roughly 50,000 generated shots over two years, taking Georges Perec's 1967 novel A Man Asleep as the starting point for a semi-autobiographical essay about living permanently online.

Festival director Bernd Buder says the film "exposes the hazards of our hyper-connected society with analytical sharpness, personal intimacy, and steady narrative poise."

The producers call it the first AI feature in an established festival's main competition. Their own documentary Post Truth competed for the Fantasporto Grand Prize in March, so read that claim as theirs, and Cottbus publishes its full program on Oct 15.

In practice, an AI feature can now enter a general festival's competition and be judged by critics as cinema rather than as a tool demo, and this one got there on models trained on the director's own work.

Source: Spongeworthy Studio release via Türkiye Today, Oct 7, 2026; Variety, Sep 25, 2026; Fantasporto 2026 program.