The international jury of the second edition of +RAIN Film Festival, International Film and Artificial Intelligence Festival, shared their verdict this Wednesday, June 12, at the awards ceremony held at the Auditori MediaComplex of Mediapro. The jury, composed of Shyam Sundar from Penn State University; Mads Damsbo, creative technologist and entrepreneur, co-founder of Kaspar AI; and Rachel Falconer from Goldsmiths University of London, has decided to award the following prizes:
 

The award for Best Film goes to 512X512, by Arthur Chopin (France, 2023): “This film crept up on us and stunned us with its casual yet profound interrogation into AI visual archetypes. It took us on an engaging journey of digital archeology in found footage of the internet and exposed to us the skewed and leveled hierarchy of our collective visual memory.”

The Jury Prize goes to Fried Egg, by Rucha Thigale (United Kingdom, 2024): “A film that was raw, yet sensitive, intuitive, yet deliberate and although it at times felt random and disconnected it exposed a clear new vulnerable voice that with time and further exploration of AI as co-creator could fulfill a promising potential. ”

And, finally, Morbo, by Jonas Sanson (Brazil, 2024), has received a Special Mention: “We greatly appreciate this filmmakers intention to honestly depict their lived experience of their world. The execution had a direct impact on us and the rhythm and cadence of the semiotic montage made us want to stop at every frame. Knowing that there was a meticulous process of de-biasing the algorithm, adds to the fact that we must take our hats off to this promising storyteller.”
 

+RAIN AT SÓNAR+D

On June 13 and 14, +RAIN will move to the Fira de Montjuïc, the venue for Sónar by Day. The first day will host the FAIR, where about sixty international experts in AI and the audiovisual industry will discuss the challenges, opportunities, and transformation vectors in the era of generative AI.

On the second day, the AI & WEB3 CREATIVES SUMMIT will take place, a space for inspiration, debate, and presentation of startups and spin-offs related to the cultural and creative industries, and artistic research projects with emerging technologies.
Sónar+D will also present three installations from +RAIN in the Project Area: the winning films of the festival, a digital archive activated by artist Azahara Cerezo that connects musical and audiovisual proposals generated with AI, and Latent Booth, an interactive experience on communication between humans and machines, culminating in a collaborative film with contributions from Hugging Face.

+RAIN ON FILMIN 

Starting June 13, the 10 films in competition will be available on Filmin. From June 17 to 30, the entire program of the second edition of +RAIN will be available online: presentations, debates, and screenings of the films from the second edition of +RAIN. The presentations from the AI & WEB3 CREATIVES SUMMIT, which will take place as part of Sónar+D, will also be available. For those who are not users of the platform, the subscription price is €9.99, which also grants access to the rest of Filmin's content for a whole month.