Lumara Film Festival 2026 — New York

The first Lumara Film Festival, founded by the crypto payments company MoonPay and the private AI platform Venice, held its world premiere at the Roxy Cinema in New York, with more than $100,000 in prizes and a rule that every frame of footage be AI-generated. More than 700 films were submitted, and six made the Grand Prize shortlist. The jury mixed AI filmmakers, among them Voidstomper, Gossip Goblin, BLVCKL!GHT, JBoogx and Heavy Pulp, with Backrooms executive producer Chris White and the crypto hosts Ansem and FaZe Banks. Gossip Goblin also screened an extended prologue of Gods Don't Give Gifts.

The $32,000 Grand Prize went to Candy by Jiaze Li, a Seedance 2.5 sci-fi short in which acts of violence start turning people into candy, a month after his Website won the Reply AI Studios Grand Prix in Venice. The $20,000 Jury Selection went to Mianmian by Yingjie Chen, a story of love and loss told by a pet fish, the one finalist that hadn't been released online; Venice posted an excerpt the next day. The other finalists were Killabears by Mikael Tyrsén, Gabriel by T Zhang, Living with a Merman by Chris Capel and Black Thunder by Ryan Lightbourn, which took the Serenissima Award for the best film made with Venice. The Dor Brothers' REVIVER won the Terminal Award for experimental film, Luke Mazey's Ato de [Later] the Get Shorty Award for films under two minutes, FIX by Eunha Lee, Sora Lee and Hakhoon Lee the Mouse Award for young audiences, and Yassine Le Gall's JUST SAY SOLANA the Rekt Award for finance and crypto satire.