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A Woman Asleep, an all-AI essay film, premieres at Antalya before competing at Cottbus

Vikki Bardot's 80-minute, English-language film, made with AI images, her cloned voice and AI music, played a gala slot at Antalya. Next it competes in Cottbus's main competition, billed as the first AI feature in a general festival's main competition.

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Antalya's art director told the press on Oct 13 that films made entirely with AI had not yet matched films shot the traditional way. In the same answer, he announced one for the festival's gala slate.

That film, A Woman Asleep (Uyuyan Kadın), screened on Oct 26 at the 63rd Antalya Golden Orange Film Festival, Turkey's oldest. By the makers' account, every image, the narration and the music came from AI tools, and the narrator is a clone of director Vikki Bardot's own voice. Bardot is the name Gizem Avcıoğlu works under abroad. She wrote, produced and edited the 80-minute, English-language essay film with her husband, Alkan Avcıoğlu, drawing on her own life.

The form is the smart part. An essay film inspired by Georges Perec's A Man Asleep needs no talking actors and no characters who must look the same from shot to shot, which is where AI video is still weakest. Bardot told Screen International she kept the voice "emotionally flat" on purpose, to reflect a society "becoming more machine-like." Then the team took the indie route: a trailer premiere in Variety, the Berlin market, a Turkish arthouse distributor for a spring 2027 release, and festival programmers rather than AI-only showcases.

Next week it is one of 10 films in the main competition at FilmFestival Cottbus in Germany, Nov 3 to 8. Screen and the makers bill it as the first AI feature in the main competition of an established festival, one open to films of every genre. The studio's AI documentary Post Truth reached a different milestone in February, in the main competition of Fantasporto, a genre festival for fantasy, horror and sci-fi. The tools are still unnamed, and no budget has been published.

Our take: the achievement is an AI feature judged as a film, next to films of every genre, by programmers who doubt the tools. Cottbus will show whether a jury sees it the same way.

Source: Türkiye Today, Oct 27, 2026; Antalya Golden Orange festival; Screen International, Oct 16, 2026; Habertürk.

Read the full article: thegenerated.com/stories/a-woman-asleep-ai-film-antalya-cottbus-20261028

Provenance — Türkiye Today; Antalya festival film page · Status: verified: MEDIUM (Türkiye Today + festival listing)
An all-AI essay film premiered at Turkey's oldest festival. Next week it competes at Cottbus

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An all-AI essay film premiered at Turkey's oldest festival. Next week it competes at Cottbus

Vikki Bardot's 80-minute, English-language essay film was made with AI image, voice and music tools, and the models are still unnamed. It got into Turkey's oldest festival and Cottbus's main competition the way indie films do, through a distributor and programmers, and is billed as the first AI feature in a general festival's main competition.

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Directors Alkan Avcıoğlu, holding a microphone, and Gizem Avcıoğlu (Vikki Bardot) standing before the screen at the Antalya Golden Orange Q&A for A Woman Asleep

At 21:30 on Monday 26 October, the AKM Perge hall at the Antalya Golden Orange Film Festival screened an 80-minute film in which every image, the narrator's voice and the music came out of AI tools. When the lights came up, Gizem Avcıoğlu and her husband and co-writer Alkan Avcıoğlu stood in front of the screen for a Q&A. She told the audience that the production was made entirely with AI tools, and that she had written and edited it with him, drawing on her own life.

The film is A Woman Asleep (Uyuyan Kadın), credited to Vikki Bardot, the name Avcıoğlu works under abroad. It played as a National Gala title at the festival's 63rd edition, with two more screenings on 27 and 30 October. Next week it moves up a level: it is one of 10 films in the main feature competition at FilmFestival Cottbus in Germany, running 3 to 8 November, in the same lineup as new work from Radu Jude and Kantemir Balagov.

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