Artist and filmmaker Vikki Bardot’s AI-generated feature A Woman Asleep has been selected in the main competition of Germany’s upcoming FilmFestival Cottbus, which runs November 3-8.
It is believed to be the first AI-generated feature selected for the main competition of an established international film festival.
Cottbus showcases films from emerging directors from Central and Eastern Europe.
Scroll down for full line-up
The Cottbus line-up also includes Russian director Kantemir Balagov’s Butterfly Jam, which made its world premiere as the opening film of Cannes’ Directors Fortnight, and Georgian director Levan Koguashvili’s Venice Spotlight title Guria.
A Woman Asleep is based on a semi-autobiographical screenplay by Bardot. It is an edit of 50,000 shots in which all the visuals and scenes were generated through AI models trained and customised by Bardot.
The film is narrated through an AI voice clone of the director’s own voice, and all its music is AI-generated through a custom experimental workflow.
”I intentionally used synthetic imagery and an emotionally flat AI clone of my own voice to reflect a society that is increasingly detached and becoming more machine-like,” Bardot explained.
A Woman Asleep is produced by Turkey-based AI-focused production company Spongeworthy Studio, which was behind 2025 AI-generated doc Post Truth. It is co-produced and co-written with Spongeworthy Studio’s Alkan Avcıoğlu.
A few AI-generated features have appeared in festival programmes, mostly in special screenings and side sections. A Woman Asleep will make its world premiere at Turkey’s Antalya Golden Orange Film Festival later this month and has been sold to Turkish arthouse distributor Başka Sinema.
FilmFestival Cottbus festival director Bernd Buder said: “A Woman Asleep captures the pitfalls of our information-saturated society with a refreshing blend of analytical acuity, a personal touch, and narrative composure.”
Cottbus’s line-up also includes Romanian directors Florin Şerban’s Locarno Golden Leopard winner You Don’t Belong Here and Radu Jude’s Cannes Directors Fortnight title Diary Of A Chambermaid.
FilmFest Cottbus competition 2026
- A Safe Place, dir. Cecilia Ștefănescu (Rom)
- A Woman Asleep dir. Vikki Bardot, (Turkey)
- Black Trumpet, dir. Bojan Stijović (Mont)
- Butterfly Jam, dir. Kantemir Balagov (Fr-US)
- Guria, dir. Levan Koguashvili (Georgia-Switz-Lux-Bel-Turkey-Nor-Saudi)
- Kira’s Dream, dir. Denys Kolesnikov (Ukr)
- Memory, dir. Vladlena Sandu (Neth-Fr 2025)
- The Diary Of A Chambermaid, dir. Radu Jude (Fr-Rom)
- What Belongs To Others, dir. Grzegorz Dębowski (Pol)
- You Don’t Belong Here, dir. Florin Şerban (Rom)
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