'Memory of Princess Mumbi' Wins Istanbul Festival Top Prize

The 45th Istanbul Film Festival awarded its Golden Tulip to an AI assisted feature for the first time in the festival's history. "Memory of Princess Mumbi," a dystopian fable by Swiss Kenyan director Damien Hauser, took the top prize at the April 9–19 event. It is the first AI assisted film to win the leading award at a prominent mainstream international film festival.

A World Built by AI

Set in 2093, the film takes place in Umata, an imaginary African nation built entirely from AI generated environments, characters, and landscapes. The story follows a love triangle: a film director named Kuve, an aspiring actress, and a prince. Hauser has described the work as part romance, part mockumentary.

Hauser told Variety he could not have made the film without AI, even as he set out to "make a movie that AI could never make". That tension sits at the center of the project. He used the technology to construct a world far beyond what a traditional production budget would permit, while insisting that the human story behind the images is why the film exists.

A Memorial for a Lost Brother

The project began as an act of mourning. Hauser's brother Charles died in a motorcycle accident at age 14, before the film took shape. He traveled to Kenya to recover, and his meditation on how people choose to remember those they have lost became the foundation of the screenplay.

Hauser is Swiss Kenyan, and the film draws on his relationship to East Africa as both a cultural homeland and an imagined future landscape. AI allowed him to realize that vision without access to studio financing or the traditional centers of film production.

The 45th Istanbul Film Festival

The Istanbul Film Festival is one of the major film markets bridging European and Asian cinema. Its 45th edition ran April 9–19, 2026, in a revamped format that expanded its international competition. The Golden Tulip is the festival's top competitive prize, awarded across narrative and documentary features.

A win here carries institutional weight well outside the AI film space. Previous AI film recognition has come primarily from AI focused events such as the World AI Film Festival at Cannes, which ran in April as an independent competition entirely separate from the official Cannes selection. Istanbul runs no such category distinction. "Memory of Princess Mumbi" competed on the same terms as every other film in the program.

A Continuing Festival Run

The film has screened at the Singapore International Film Festival, the Vancouver International Film Festival, Film Fest Gent, and other international venues since its premiere. Its presence across four major mainstream festivals points to a work being evaluated on artistic grounds. The Istanbul win substantially raises its distribution profile.

The film's arc mirrors that of "Dreams of Violets", which became the first fully AI generated film accepted into Tribeca's official lineup, premiering in June 2026. Both films argue the same point: AI is a production tool, not a replacement for a human story worth telling.

Filmmakers developing work for international festival submission can generate and refine AI video using AI FILMS Studio.

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Sources

Variety | The Film Verdict | Swiss Films | Türkiye Today | Singapore International Film Festival