The Total Dream

“We grew up with cinema, with images of film sets as grand and gleaming as the movie theaters where we sat dreaming. Today, the world spins faster: AI has transformed from tech jargon to everyday tool, writing texts, negotiating contracts, composing ‘art’—and evolving faster than its developers can control. For cinema, this is both an opportunity and a threat: productions become cheaper, budgets get smaller. Jobs erode, algorithms flood an already shrinking audience. Parallel to this, cinema is experiencing digital gentrification: films are moving from expensive theaters to cheaper server farms, while fewer and fewer people are willing to purchase a cinema ticket at the price of a monthly subscription. Crises, inflation, and political disruptions intensify the risk. But perhaps it is precisely for this reason that now is the moment to make films, despite it all—contrary to the logic of machines, contrary to fear—carried by a community that no algorithm can calculate.”