What happened
The 36th FilmFestival Cottbus, a festival of East European cinema, runs 3 to 8 November 2026. Its programme, online since 15 October, lists A Woman Asleep by Vikki Bardot among the ten films in the Feature Film Competition. The festival's film page calls it fully AI-generated, narrated by an AI clone of the director's voice and loosely based on Georges Perec's novel A Man Asleep.
The film comes from Spongeworthy Studio, a Turkish AI studio, and screens at Filmtheater Weltspiegel on 4 November at 18:15 and 7 November at 13:30 CET.
Why it matters
For makers of long generated films, the selection shows an established competition judging one in its main ten-film section, not in a separate AI strand. The festival's 2026 regulations contain no rule on AI use or disclosure, so no separate condition applies to A Woman Asleep.
Programmers can see the studio's earlier film, Post Truth by Alkan Avcıoğlu, in the Spectrum section on 4 November at 12:30 or 5 November at 21:15.
Still open
The awards page lists the Main Prize for best film, donated by Medienboard Berlin Brandenburg, without an amount. A Niederlausitz Aktuell report of 20 October attributes to the festival the claim that it is the first fully AI-generated feature in the main competition of an established international festival. The festival's own pages do not make that claim.