Tribeca Founder Jane Rosenthal Defends AI Film Screening

Tribeca Film Festival co-founder Jane Rosenthal is defending the fest’s decision to premiere “Dreams of Violets,” a fully AI-generated film about the Iranian civilian resistance.

“I think people need to read the director’s [Ash Koosha’s] statement,” Rosenthal told Variety at the festival’s 25th anniversary cocktail reception in lower Manhattan Monday night. “The director is Iranian — his family, relatives and friends are there and it’s the only way in a two month period he could tell his story, his way.”

The film, which will premiere June 10, marks the first full-length, live-action film generated by AI to be accepted by a major film festival, a decision that has sparked some backlash online.

But Rosenthal doubled down on its premiere. “If somebody wrote a song about it, you wouldn’t say anything, if somebody wrote a poem about it, you wouldn’t say anything, if somebody wanted to dance about it, you wouldn’t say anything,” she said. “So [Koosha] did it his way, so I think you have to look at it in that context.”

The 75-minute docudrama is inspired by the protests that swept Tehran in January, highlighting five Iranians who meet in a Tehran alley before they’re executed, all witnessed from a window by Amir, a 10-year-old boy with cerebral palsy. The clashes reflect the real-world protests between Iranian authorities and civilians, which left at least 7,000 people dead and more than 50,000 people arrested, according to the Human Rights Activists News Agency.

“If it were about WWII, if it were about the Civil War, about any other story, you wouldn’t do it,” Rosenthal continued. “These stories have not gotten out. Is it perfect? No. But it’s something that should be seen right now at this time.”

Koosha’s director’s statement, cited by Rosenthal, is pasted below:

I want to be honest about why I made it the way I did. It was not a technological exercise. I would have preferred to make this film with a crew, with actors, with the dignity of a full production. That was not available to me. I am one person, in exile, with no access to Iran, no access to the locations, no access to the people. The AI pipeline made it possible to do what would otherwise have been impossible: to create a memorial film for an event that happened behind a wall I cannot cross. I understand that an AI-generated film about people who actually died raises difficult questions. I have thought about those questions for every minute of every day I have worked on this film. My answer is that the alternative — silence, forgetting, the regime’s preferred outcome — is worse. The film exists because the dead deserve to be witnessed and because the families inside Iran, who cannot speak, deserve someone outside who refuses to forget. I am not certain that this is the right form for this story. I am certain that this story needed a form, and this is the form that was available to me. The film is dedicated to the people killed in January 2026 and for the last 47 years, to their families inside Iran, and to the children who watched.

Alongside Robert De Niro, Rosenthal hosted Monday night’s opening reception at the Perelman Performing Arts Center, located on the same block as the World Trade Center — a purposeful nod to Tribeca’s history. The festival was launched by the duo in the aftermath of the Sept. 11 attacks as part of an effort to help revitalize Lower Manhattan.

After opening remarks from Whoopi Goldberg, De Niro and Rosenthal took the stage to reflect on the festival’s founding 25 years ago. Much of their joint speech was devoted to former Mayor Michael Bloomberg, who also spoke about his role in helping reshape New York City after 9/11.

Also in attendance were Katie Holmes, Ayo Edebiri, Graydon Carter, Diane von Furstenberg, Bette Midler, James Murdoch, Cynthia Rowley, Kara Swisher, Katie Couric and others. Check out photos of the evening below: