We show
you
the
trick.
25-27 February 2027 Naples. Provisional dates.
Generated. GPT image.
WAIFF Napoli is the first Italian edition of the World AI Film Festival and the Italian stop on the circuit that leads to the WAIFF Grand Finale at the Palais des Festivals in Cannes. We award prizes to films made with artificial intelligence tools, and we ask each of them to say how it was made.
The pact
The lights go down.
Generated. GPT image.
You know you're in a cinema. You know there's nothing on the screen but light. You know the actor is alive and, right now, having dinner. You cry anyway.
It's the oldest pact in cinema. Nobody signs it and everybody keeps it. Artificial intelligence changes the tools. The pact with the audience stays.
Non è vero, ma ci credo.
It's not real, but I believe it.
At the cinema you know it isn't real, and you believe it anyway. At WAIFF Napoli every film says how it was made.
The hump is fake, sewn into the jacket
The line is the saying made famous by Peppino De Filippo's comedy. A superstitious businessman pins his luck on a hunchbacked clerk. Business really does pick up. The hump is fake, sewn into the jacket, and the story ends well when the trick is revealed.
The production journal is that moment. A film takes you where it wants, with the tools it wants. At the end it opens its jacket and shows you the stitching.
The audience knows it isn't real and chooses to believe. A deepfake takes that choice away.
A deepfake hides. Cinema declares.
How the production journal worksFour commitments
We ask every film to say how it was made. Then the jury reads and decides. We hold ourselves to four things, in front of everyone.
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An author.
Every film has a person who answers for it.
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Consent.
Faces and voices are used only with the permission of the people they belong to.
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Transparency.
Every film says how it was made.
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Work.
Anyone afraid for their craft has a place on the stage.
Doubt takes a seat
In 2026 the World AI Film Festival jury was chaired by a filmmaker who put her fear in writing. She said yes, and partly because of it. That's where we want to start.
“I have to tell you that I'm one of the many people terrorized by AI and all the fantasies it represents, and it's partly for this reason that I accepted your proposal.”
“Cinema, on the other hand, will always be a matter of imagination. And imagination cannot be programmed.”
“we are looking for human stories to tell in an inhuman world”
Why Naples
In Naples, cinema was made by hand.
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In the Naples of Elvira Notari, considered Italy's first woman director, films were coloured by hand, frame by frame, in Nicola Notari's workshop.
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In San Giovanni a Teduccio the Apple Developer Academy has worked with the University of Naples Federico II since 2016, and over 3,000 students from 80 countries and regions have passed through it.
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The Casa delle Tecnologie Emergenti, the city's centre for emerging technologies, sits inside the Real Albergo dei Poveri.
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And 2027 is the year of the America's Cup, with the Match from 10 July.
This is the city that's hosting us. None of these names is connected to the festival.
Generated. GPT image.
Who makes it happen
WAIFF Napoli is organised by 2WATCH Group, WAIFF and Giffoni Innovation Hub, based on a format by Institut EuropIA, under the patronage of the City of Naples and in collaboration with the City and the Fondazione Film Commission Regione Campania.
Now we need the films.