Kev

Kev is a four-minute AI-made short film from 2026, written and directed by Mike Bennion. It is a mockumentary in documentary style, and its subject, Kev, is a fictional character. It is on Bennion's Vimeo and YouTube channels, with the YouTube upload dated 22 January 2026.

Bennion says there was no script. He began with faces generated in Midjourney, chosen because they did not look generic, then animated Kev and gave him a voice in Veo 3, first talking about being blind and then about other topics as he made more clips. The story grew clip by clip, which he called a very organic process. The Reply festival listing names Midjourney, Nano Banana, Kling, Veo 3 and ElevenLabs. Bennion writes the prompts himself, generates bridging shots when cuts do not work and keeps the pacing slow on purpose. He has said the character was his idea and that "ai breathed life into him".

Bennion is a British former London commercial director who shot on film, then stepped away to raise his children and sculpt in the USA, where he has lived for about 16 years. He told the RealmIQ: SESSIONS podcast (22 August 2026) that generative AI brought him back to filmmaking, and he describes it as the way he can tell stories he could not afford to shoot conventionally. His earlier AI shorts include Memento Mori, Before Night Falls and Carpe Diem. Kev carries personal touches: his Manchester United loyalty, Kev's North West accent and his late father.

Before any AI festival, Bennion entered Kev in traditional festivals so it would be judged as a film. He says it played about 20, and that almost nobody spotted the AI, the specialist documentary festival at the BFI among them. It was then named one of ten finalists at the 2026 Reply AI Film Festival, held in Venice, where it did not place. The YouTube upload showed 130 views when read on 6 October 2026.

Kev won the Doc/Mockumentary category of the MetaMorph AI Award 2026, which Bennion said he hoped would raise his profile and bring work. A profile on The Daring Creatives, posted on 6 October 2026, says its Vimeo page lists roughly 40 laurels, including Doc.Boston and the Rome AI Festival. The same profile says Bennion can now make a short film a week, and he told MetaMorph he would next enter AI-focused festivals.

In that profile and in his interviews, Bennion presents Kev as an example of what a filmmaker with a commercials background can do with AI on his own. He says he aims for footage that looks as if it came through a camera lens, and that the technology "constantly surprises" him. He also says the film shows "it's not all slop out there".