Symposium – Don’t Die Now! : Cinema & artificial intelligences
05–06.05.2026
IKEA Auditorium, ECAL

Artificial intelligence technologies are now playing an increasingly prominent role in discourse, as well as in creation practices, production and distribution of works, and in film education. This symposium therefore aims to shed light on the potential and challenges of these tools in order to understand how to use them — or decide not to — in full awareness, and to explore critical perspectives or possible alternative models. Discussions will also address the ethical and environmental issues raised by their development.

This inaugural meeting will bring together film professionals and researchers to collectively reflect on the transformations brought about by these new tools. Directors, producers, screenwriters, historians and philosophers will share their experiences of how AI — whether analytical or generative — is transforming and sometimes disrupting the film production chain, and how they are adapting to it.

These two days of presentations and discussions were conceived as the starting point for a research project led by the Cinema Department at ECAL. Three practical trials will follow from autumn 2026 onwards, with the aim of drawing lessons and making recommendations regarding the use of these tools. The trials and their results will be presented at a second symposium in the spring of 2027.

Lecturers

• Roberto Beragnoli, Director, Florence
• Edouard Boccon Gibod, Producer at The Media Company, Paris
• Gilles Gaillard, Director of Photography and former director of MIKROS. Partner at the NIN9E Studio investment fund, Paris
• Andrea Gatopoulos, Director, Rome
• Philippe Lasry, Screenwriter and Head of the Screenwriting Department at FEMIS, Paris
• Alice Leroy, Film historian and critic at Cahiers du Cinéma, Paris
• André Ourednik, Researcher and science fiction author, Lausanne

Further lecturers will be announced shortly.