Camerimage Draws a Line on AI as It Opens in Toruń

Camerimage, the Polish festival devoted to cinematography, will keep its doors open to new tools but not to films made entirely by artificial intelligence. Its founder, Marek Zydowicz, said so in an interview with The Hollywood Reporter, published on 8 November 2026.

The festival runs in Toruń, Poland, from 7 to 14 November. Cinematography is the craft of the director of photography, the person who decides how a film looks through lenses, light and camera movement. Zydowicz launched the event in 1993 to champion cinematographers and other below-the-line artists, the crew members whose names rarely appear on posters.

Those names are at the centre of the AI debate. Zydowicz told the magazine that the festival will remain open to a diversity of techniques and technologies, but it draws the line at fully AI-generated films. Generative AI, software that creates images or video from written instructions, is a live question across the film business, and this year's Camerimage includes debates and workshops on it.

The festival's guest list is also taking shape. Darren Aronofsky is being honoured with the director award. Joe Walker, who edited Dune and 12 Years a Slave, will chair the jury for the Main Competition. Polish cinematographer Janusz Kaminski receives The Hollywood Reporter's Visionary award, and his film Disclosure Day is screening in competition.

For a festival built around the view through the camera, the AI question goes to the heart of the job. Who decides what a frame looks like, and who gets credit for it? Those are the questions the workshops and panels are likely to take up over the coming week, and Zydowicz's answer so far is that people, not software, should make the picture.