AI-friendly director Darren Aronofsky received the 2026 Director Award at Camerimage Camerimage The AI elephant in the room took center stage on Saturday at the opening night of the 34th Camerimage Film Festival.
Instead of avoiding the divisive issue of artificial intelligence, the Polish fest, the world’s leading festival for the celebration of the art of cinematography, doubled down.
For the opening address, in place of festival director Marek Żydowicz, Camerimage sent a humanoid robot, called “Edward Warchocki,” on stage. The slightly tottering, Polish-speaking android addressed the crowd before Żydowicz joined it for an extended back-and-forth about the role of AI in cinema. The “hopes and threats” of the technology, Żydowicz stressed, would be a major talking point throughout the seven-day event in Toruń.
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The Camerimage opening ceremony featured a humanoid robot called Edward. Camerimage The theme ran through the three-hour ceremony at the city’s Jordanki Culture Centre, which was regularly interspersed with video messages from Francis Ford Coppola, Gal Gadot, Christopher Nolan, Maggie Gyllenhaal, Steven Spielberg and Ben Affleck, each weighing in on AI in entertainment.
Few filmmakers are as closely associated with the debate as Darren Aronofsky, who was honored with Camerimage’s honorary Award for Director. A vocal advocate of generative AI in filmmaking since launching his AI studio Primordial Soup last year, the Requiem for a Dream and Black Swan helmer said it was his third visit to the festival and that he hoped to keep coming back.
“The reason I come back is because there are very rarely film festivals that celebrate the collaboration of everyone,” he said. “They’re very focused on not just the flashy names and that’s really incredible because it honors everyone who makes films possible for people like me.”
Other honorees included Karolina Gruszka, one of Poland’s most acclaimed film and stage actresses, who received the Marshal of the Kujawy Pomorze Region Film Award. Gruszka, who appeared in David Lynch’s last feature, Inland Empire (which was shot in Poland) paid tribute to the late director as a “master investigator” of stories.
Polish cinematographer Janusz Kamiński, longtime Spielberg collaborator and two-time Oscar winner (for Schindler’s List and Saving Private Ryan) received The Hollywood Reporter’s Visionary Award for contributions to cinematography. The festival also paid tribute to the late great Polish director Andrzej Wajda (Man of Iron, Ashes and Diamonds), a century after his birth and a decade after his death, with a performance by the Polish Radio Choir – Lusławice giving an a cappella reinterpretation of the music from Wajda’s most important films. Poland’s Senate has declared 2026 “The Year of Wajda.”
The night’s opening film — Luca Guadagnino’s OpenAI origin story Artificial, starring Andrew Garfield as Sam Altman and Yura Borisov as Ilya Sutskever — continued the AI theme. Guadagnino and cinematographer Malik Hassan Sayeed took the stage to discuss the film and the issues it raises. When it comes to cinema, said Sayeed, AI was “just a tool, like any other.” Guadagnino, who shot Artificial on 35 mm and has shown no interest in using AI for his work, said the real issues raised by Artificial are about “what they call the tech oligarchs, the tech bros” and the unprecedented levels of power, “economic power and political power” they have acquired over our lives. Simon Rich’s script, he said, offered “an unprecedented setup for showing how very few people control societies.” Neon is releasing Artificial in the U.S. on Dec. 25.
The Camerimage festivities were overshadowed by events elsewhere in the country. The ceremony began with a minute’s silence for the victims of a mass shooting in Kraków earlier in the day. According to reports, at least six people were killed and more than a dozen injured when a gunman, suspected of far-right ties, drove into the city’s historic Main Market Square and opened fire. Prime Minister Donald Tusk said three more bodies were later found at the suspect’s home, making it Poland’s deadliest shooting in decades. Local politicians scheduled to speak at the opening acknowledged the severity of the attack before the program began.
Camerimage runs through Nov. 14.
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