Oscar-winning director Gabriele Salvatores will preside over the jury of the 2026 Reply AI Film Festival, which returns to the Venice Film Festival in September for its third edition and announces its winners on 6 September. The competition drew 3,000 short films experimenting with artificial intelligence tools; ten finalists remain, selected under the theme "Imaginatio Nova" (Deadline).

Salvatores, who won the Academy Award for Best Foreign Language Film with Mediterraneo in 1992, is joined on the jury by a cross-section of film-making, technology and journalism figures. Directors Rob Minkoff (The Lion King) and Catherine Hardwicke (Thirteen, Twilight) sit alongside Jed Weintrob, a director and partner at creative studio 30 Ninjas, which he runs with Doug Liman and Julina Tatlock. VFX supervisor Giacomo Mineo, whose credits include Oppenheimer and The Odyssey, brings the post-production perspective. Christina Lee Storm, a former technology-focused producer at DreamWorks Animation and Netflix, and Nils Hartmann, producer of Gomorrah and The Young Pope, round out the film-making side (Deadline).

Journalists Brian Welk and Denise Negri hold seats, as does Filippo Rizzante, chief technology officer of Reply — the Italian digital-services company that organises the festival. Guillem Martinez Roura, AI and robotics lead on the "AI for Good" initiative at the United Nations' International Telecommunication Union, joins the panel. So does Jacopo Reale, who won the 2025 Reply prize for his short Love at First Sight, giving the jury a past champion's perspective (Deadline).

The jury will present three awards: Best Short Film, the AI for Good Award — given to the film that most effectively interprets the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals — and the Reply AI Studios Grand Prix, which recognises the highest levels of innovation and excellence in the use of AI throughout the creative process (Deadline).

Five of the ten finalists have been publicly detailed. Robert Gaudette (Canada) made A Face Only A Mother Could Love using Grok, Nano Banana and Seedance. Collective 2xLabs (China) created Centenarian Kindergarten with Nano Banana Pro and Jimeng SeedAce 2. Simone Paradiso (Italy) produced GO HOME with Higgsfield Soul Cinema, GPT Image 2.0 and Seedance 2.0. Mike Bennion (UK) used Midjourney, Nano Banana, Kling, Veo 3 and ElevenLabs for Kev. Alex Naghavi and Ezra Li (Australia and U.S.) made Le Drip with Nano Banana, Claude, Seedance and Runway (Deadline).

The remaining five finalists have not yet been detailed in the trade press.

The Reply AI Film Festival lands at a Venice edition that is, itself, engaging with AI on the main stage. The 2026 festival is showcasing its first ever AI-made feature in Official Selection: Francesco Carrozzini's documentary Be Brave, about Diesel fashion label founder Renzo Rosso (Deadline).

For a competition now in its third year, the jury's breadth tells its own story. A studio animation veteran, a UN technology lead, an Oscar-winning director and a returning prize winner are all being asked the same question: what makes a film a film when the tools change? Venice will have at least one answer on 6 September.