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First short film · 2026

Unseen

The story of Iris, a blind painter, and an artificial intelligence that learns to stand beside her. A film built single-handedly, one shot at a time.

Among the 10 world finalists · AI for Good Film Festival, Geneva

World premiere · Geneva

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July 9, 2026 · 6:00 PM (Geneva)

What it means to create something beautiful, and never be able to see it.

4:29

Runtime

2

Voices on screen

5

AI tools

1

Cat (Leo)

0

Crew on set

1

Director

The film

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Online from July 9, 2026, 6:00 PM

The concept

Iris paints
what she cannot see

Iris paints with her hands, recognizes colors by smell and texture, mixes by touch. She knows that thick means wet, dry means done. She has never seen her paintings: to know whether they are beautiful, she has always had to trust other people's words.

The film imagines what happens when a technology of today walks into that room: an AI that, through an earpiece, names the colors on the canvas as she paints. It doesn't give her back her eyes. It gives her back her canvas.

With her is Leo, an orange tabby cat. He walks across the paintings left to dry and leaves pawprints: his signature. They are the last image of the film.

“It doesn't give me back my eyes.
It gives me back my canvas.”

Stills

Premiering in Geneva · July 9, 2026

Iris paints by touch — ● Iris paints by touch

Leo's orange pawprints — ● Leo's orange pawprints

Mixing colors by touch — ● Mixing colors by touch

The AI names the colors — ● The AI names the colors

The canvas, finally hers — ● The canvas, finally hers

The brush — ● The brush

Leo on the stool — ● Leo on the stool

Iris and the canvas — ● Iris and the canvas

Direction

Voice 1 · human

Intimate, low, slow, as if Iris were talking to herself.

Voice 2 · machine

Deliberately synthetic. Honest. You can tell it's a tool, and it never pretends to be anything else.

At the most emotional moment, while Iris cries, the AI keeps describing facts without emotion: “The purple curve reaches toward the center. About twenty centimeters.” The AI feels nothing. Iris feels everything: she cannot see, yet she senses it all. The machine doesn't give her back her eyes, it gives her back her canvas.

The pipeline

The tool executes. The decisions stay with the director.

01 Higgsfield Cinema Studio Images and scenes

02 Kling Video generation

03 ElevenLabs The two voices

04 CapCut Editing, rhythm, music

Generative doesn't mean pressing a button and waiting for magic. It's the exact opposite: I directed every shot, chose every movement, discarded a great deal. Much of the study and testing went through ComfyUI: there I try out and refine the prompts before taking them to the other tools. Library music, royalty free, not generated. No crew, no shoot, no major-studio budget.

Leo — ● Leo

”Can you see what I feel?” — ● ”Can you see what I feel?”

Restoration,
not replacement.

Technology, when it's done right, doesn't replace people: it gives them something back. The film closes on black, in silence.

“For 285 million people, the canvas is waiting.”

Recognition

UNSEEN is my first truly ambitious project, bigger and longer than anything I'd made before. And the first time I took it out into the world, it ended up among the 10 finalist films out of more than 1,300 entries from all over the world.

Not for the technical effect. It was chosen because it tells AI for Good literally - visual assistance for those who cannot see already exists, today - and stakes everything on a single emotion: technology that doesn't replace, but restores.

AI for Good Film Festival 2026, organized by the ITU (United Nations). It will be screened on July 9, 2026 in Geneva.

Credits

Directed by: Erika Taranto
AI workflow and method: Oleksandr Moccogni
Year: 2026
Runtime: 4 min 29 s

In the press

“From Lipari to the United Nations: Erika Taranto’s short film UNSEEN heads to the UN”

Notiziario delle Isole Eolie

by Bartolino Leone · July 5, 2026 · in Italian

Read the article →

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