Cinematographers’ Favorite Festival Is All About AI This Year — but Artists Still Hate the Tech

ToruńCAMERIMAGE promised to devote its 2026 edition to "the hopes and threats of AI." The discussions are more than living up to that.

During the opening ceremony of the 34th ToruńCAMERIMAGE International Film Festival on Saturday, November 7, audience members saw a human replaced by a machine right in front of their eyes. The festival’s founder and artistic director Marek Żydowicz was invited to the stage, only for a robot to walk out in his place and begin addressing the audience and thanking sponsors.

Żydowicz took the stage a few moments later and joked that none of us are immune to the threat of AI and robots coming for our jobs. (The machine was Edward Warchocki, a humanoid robot “influencer” who has gone viral in Poland for videos in which it chases wild boars around Warsaw.) The stunt set a fitting tone for a festival that has devoted this edition to covering the film industry’s most controversial topic. Warchocki remained on stage for much of the opening ceremony, later joined by an actor in an “Inland Empire” rabbit costume who helped tee up an AI-generated video in which the rabbit symbolically opened the festival gates to the new technology. Anyone hoping for a boring, consensus-driven film festival immediately had their expectations adjusted.

A festival devoted to the technological craft of filmmaking is a fitting place for these discussions. ToruńCAMERIMAGE (formerly known as Camerimage before changing its name to include its Polish host city) is an annual homecoming for cinematographers. Directors of photography are treated like rockstars at the festival, and the entire profession makes an effort to descend upon Toruń each November to discuss their craft and party late into the night. The main competition screenings are crucial to the Best Cinematography Oscar race, with so much of the voting branch in one room. Panels and Q&As often focus on the specific technical details that the overwhelmingly below-the-line audience wouldn’t hear at other festivals. The job of a cinematographer is uniquely positioned at the intersection of art and technology, and the festival was right to assume that its audience would have a lot of thoughts about the topic.

ToruńCAMERIMAGE 2026 is taking a pluralistic approach to the subject by giving AI advocates and opponents equal time, and the programming appears more interested in stirring the pot and sparking discussion than taking a firm position. The festival gave an honorary award to Darren Aronofsky, who has founded an AI studio that works with Google DeepMind, yet also programmed Luca Guadagnino’s biting Sam Altman satire “Artificial” as its opening night film. The opening ceremony was interspersed with video clips featuring the likes of Aronofsky, Steven Spielberg, Gal Gadot, and Ben Affleck sharing views on AI that ranged from optimistic to paranoid. The message was clear: All opinions are welcome, but we can’t put off talking about AI.

Broadly speaking, directors have been more open to the technology than cinematographers — before “Artificial” screened, Guadagnino stressed that his film was driven more by opposition to the consolidation of wealth and power in a few individuals than AI itself. He explained that he simply sees AI as a neutral tool, though he described its current filmmaking applications as a “cheap” trend that he expects to fade with time in the same way that 3D did. And while Aronofsky avoided the topic in his award acceptance speech, a video message from him played during the opening ceremony saw him repeating his mantra that film has always been a technology-driven medium and AI is simply the latest tech innovation that storytellers need to embrace.

But the cinematographers in attendance have not shied away from the bleak reality that the technology is creating. The term “we’re fucked” has been thrown around a lot, and audience questions have been fiery. The program is filled with panels about AI’s influence on cinematography, many of which focus on the rise of “greybox” filmmaking. The technique, notably employed on Doug Liman’s upcoming “Bitcoin” movie and rapidly popping up on other projects, involves filming actors on a neutral background before using AI to add all the production design and lighting during post.

Nobody is denying the practicality of the rapidly improving technology, which eliminates logistical problems relating to weather and locations that have plagued filmmakers for as long as the art form has existed. But it fundamentally alters the role of a cinematographer, whose job has always been to use light and composition techniques to create images in camera. Cinematographers speak about directors asking them for the softest, most generic lighting on set — not because it looks the best, but because it provides the blankest canvas for changing things in post. Even if you’re still booking gigs as a cinematographer, are you even doing the same job if you’re no longer lighting each image?

Cinematography has always been an art form that’s easy to recognize but hard to describe. Countless moviegoers have walked out of theaters praising a film’s cinematography while having no idea what a director of photography actually does on set and how that job overlaps with other positions. A cinematographer’s job is to make images beautiful (or ugly, when the script calls for it) with their knowledge of light and camera equipment. But directors can theoretically frame their own shots, gaffers can light them, and colorists play an increasingly large role in shaping the final look of each image. A recurring topic at the festival has been the fear that new technologies could freeze cinematographers out of the process altogether.

At a debate titled “State of the Image,” Polish cinematographer Bartosz Nalazek was initially presented as the most pro-AI voice on the panel. He explained how he recently wrapped a major TV show that used greybox techniques for 40 percent of its scenes. His message was that cinematographers have to embrace and adapt to the technology in order to keep working. After he finished his opening statement, fellow cinematographer Arthur Reinhart, a two-time recipient of the festival’s Golden Frog award, asked a simple question: “Are you enjoying the work?”

Nalazek did not hesitate to respond. “Totally not,” he said. “It’s horrible, I’m brain-dead.” He went on to explain that while hybrid production is technically easier for cinematographers, moving so much of the artistry to post-production means that “an elevated camera operator could do it.”

The topic represents a seismic change to a constant that cinematographers could always take for granted: their status as the most technologically savvy person on set. Even as filmmaking tools shifted from film stock to digital cameras, DPs stayed employed and respected because they knew how to use those tools better than anyone else. Now, for the first time in history, technology threatens to be the force that pushes them out of the decision-making process.

“I think what made cinematographers become who we are is the leverage over technology and the creative input. When we were shooting on film, that leverage was tremendous because nobody knew how to do it except the cinematographers,” Nalazek said. “What worries me is that we have this feeling that our position is undoubtable and unchangeable. We have this feeling that the director should respect us, the producer should respect us. I think running on that thought is pretty dangerous. We’re kind of in a time where we have to prove our worth. And that’s sad.”

One advantage of having these conversations at such a technically-oriented festival is that the cinematographers are also honest about what AI isn’t doing. Criticisms are often preempted with the caveat that AI is a broad, loaded term — anyone who edits in DaVinci or uses biometric functions on cameras has technically been using AI tools for years. Cinematographers who have worked on greybox sets make it clear that hybrid AI films are not made by one guy typing prompts in a room by himself. It can be true that AI has shrunk crew sizes enough for the community to feel strained while still acknowledging that these projects often employ hundreds of traditional film workers. And speakers have at times pushed back against audience questions that blame all AI adoption on strawman arguments about greedy producers and execs who could afford to pay artists but simply don’t want to. But nuance doesn’t make the problem any less existential.

Nobody knows where things are going next, but there’s a deep sense that every option and idea should be on the table right now. Some cinematographers are making peace with the notion that traditional filmmaking will become a specialized niche product, akin to artisanal pottery or handmade furniture, rather than the norm for everyday entertainment. We’ll be making a luxury product for a smaller audience willing to pay for it, and we’ll have to charge them accordingly, the thinking goes. Others have floated the idea that the on-set cinematography work of setting up shots will become a lower-level, commoditized job. Directors will still need masterful artists like Roger Deakins to advise them on lighting and image composition, but that high-level work could become more of a post-production role.

The only idea that nobody is taking seriously is that there’s anything cinematographers can do to put the AI genie back in the bottle.

“Camerimage is a place where all the cinematographers from around the world are coming,” Reinhart said. “If we had a voice, then it should be coming from here, and I hope it will. But I am not very optimistic it will change anything.”