Robots took to the opening stage of Camerimage, and AI discussions continued throughout the three-hour ceremony

  The opening speech of the 34th Camerimage International Photography and Film Festival was first given to a robot.On the evening of November 7, at the Jordanki Cultural Center in Toruń, Poland, a humanoid robot named “Edward Warchocki” greeted the audience in Polish. Film festival director Marek Zhidovic then came on stage to talk to it about the role of artificial intelligence in movies.

Zhidovich listed the hopes and threats brought by AI as an important topic at this event.The three-hour opening ceremony also repeatedly touched on this issue: Francis Ford Coppola, Gal Gadot, Christopher Nolan, Maggie Gyllenhaal, Steven Spielberg, and Ben Affleck expressed their views on the use of AI in the entertainment industry through videos.

Darren Aronofsky, who won the Honorary Director Award that night, was a person with a clear attitude in this discussion.He founded the AI ​​studio Primordial Soup last year and has since continued to publicly support the use of generative AI in film production.The director of Requiem for a Dream and Black Swan came to Camerimage for the third time and said he hoped to come back in the future.

What he cherishes is the festival's emphasis on behind-the-scenes collaboration: “Few festivals honor everyone's collaboration.They're not just looking at the big names, which is great because it honors everyone who makes it possible for people like me to make movies.”

Polish film and stage actress Karolina Grushka received the Kujawi-Pomeranian Regional Marshal Film Award.She starred in Inland Empire, filmed in Poland, which was also David Lynch's last feature film.When accepting the award, she called the late director a "master explorer" of the story.Cinematographer Janusz Kaminski, who has been working with Spielberg for a long time, was awarded the Hollywood Reporter Photographic Visionary Award; he has won the Oscar for Cinematography twice for Schindler’s List and Saving Private Ryan.

The opening ceremony also commemorated the centenary of the birth and the tenth anniversary of the death of Polish director Andrzej Wajda.The Polish Radio Choir Luslawice re-performed music from his important film in an a cappella performance.Wajda has directed works such as Man of Iron and Ashes and Diamonds. The Polish Senate has designated 2026 as the Year of Wajda%.

The opening film - Artificial Intelligence - (Artificial) brings the AI issue to the screen.The film directed by Luca Guadagnino tells the story of the origins of OpenAI, starring Andrew Garfield as Sam Altman and Yura Borisov as Ilya Sutskvi.When Guadagnino took the stage to communicate with director of photography Malik Hassan Said, Said described AI as "just a tool, like other tools".

Guadagnino's focus is on power.The film was shot on 35mm film, and he himself has not shown any interest in using AI for creation; talking about Simon Rich's script, he emphasized the economic and political power that the technology oligarchs have mastered, and how this power enters everyone's life.He believes that the script provides a rare narrative situation that can show how a very small number of people control society.《 Artificial Intelligence 》 will be released in the U.S. by Neon on December 25.

The opening ceremony was also cast in the shadow of domestic violence.At the beginning of the ceremony, the audience observed a minute's silence for the victims of the shooting in Krakow that day.Reports at the time stated that a gunman suspected of having ties to the far right drove into the Old City's Central Market Square and opened fire, killing at least six people and injuring more than a dozen others.Prime Minister Donald Tusk later said police had found three more bodies at the suspect's home; reports at the time called it Poland's worst shooting in decades.Local politicians scheduled to speak at the opening ceremony also spoke of the seriousness of the attack before the official program began.

This Camerimage Film Festival will last until November 14th.