A North Carolina Film Festival Is Opening Its Screen to AI-Made Films, With Entries Due on 8 March 2027
Asheville's Twin Rivers Media Festival runs its first AI-only edition on 27 March 2027. Films from 30 seconds to 97 minutes can enter, and 20% of net entry fees go to winners.
A long-running regional film festival in North Carolina has decided that AI-made cinema deserves its own night on a real screen. The Twin Rivers Media Festival, which has been showing work in Asheville for years, is running its first edition dedicated entirely to films made with artificial intelligence, and it is open to filmmakers anywhere in the world.
The festival will take place on 27 March 2027 at the Flood Gallery in Asheville, with a live screening and a Facebook Live stream for anyone who cannot attend in person. Entries close on 8 March 2027, which gives you roughly four and a half months from today to finish something. The official listing says submissions opened on 30 September 2026.
What you submit
The range of running times is unusually wide. Anything from 30 seconds to 97 minutes is eligible, so a one-minute animation and a feature-length documentary sit in the same pool. Short film, animation and experimental work are the listed categories, and the festival's tags point to appetite for documentary, music, poetry, anti-war work, AI media collage and what it calls AI magical surrealism.
The AI requirement is deliberately loose. A film must be created with some form of AI, and that can be the visuals, the animation, live action, the music or the script. Any AI tool is permitted. Your film must also have been completed within the last two years and be fully licensed for public screening, which matters if you have used music or footage you do not own.
Entry goes through FilmFreeway on the festival's submission page.
Prize structure
This is not a large-prize contest, and it is worth being clear about that. Every selected film receives a laurel award. Cash comes from a pool equal to 20% of net entry fees, which is paid out to winning filmmakers. The page does not state how that pool is divided, how many winners there will be, or what the fee total is likely to be, so the cash value cannot be known in advance. It will depend on how many people enter.
The practical prizes are the screening itself and the laurels. A live showing at a gallery and a streamed broadcast give you something concrete to put on a filmmaker biography, and laurels from a festival are a standard currency when you submit elsewhere.
Terms worth reading
Entry is not free. The listing says the fee is shown on FilmFreeway and does not give a figure, so check the amount and any early or late tiers before you commit. Because cash prizes come from a share of fees, a higher number of entrants raises the pool, but you are paying to take part.
The listing does not describe any licence you grant to the festival beyond what is needed to screen your film, nor any claim on your rights. It does not say who retains ownership. The sole rights requirement stated is that the work is fully licensed for public screening. Read the full FilmFreeway terms for the festival's screening, streaming and promotional rights before submitting, particularly given the Facebook Live stream, which means your film may be broadcast publicly.
Deadline and practical notes
The deadline is 8 March 2027. No cutoff time or timezone is published on the listing, so treat the day as the last possible moment and submit with a day in hand. The listing was last verified on 26 October 2026, and the dates and fee should be confirmed on FilmFreeway before you pay.