Chinese director Jia Zhangke has said his next feature, Mamma Dunhuang, will have artificial intelligence in its plot but will not be made with AI tools. Italian outlet Moviemag reports the film is a road movie in which a woman drives from Dunhuang in China's far west to the east coast.
Zhao Tao, his wife and regular lead, plays a woman confined to her home who relies on AI to help her on the journey. Jia plans to scout locations and work on design after the tenth Pingyao festival, which he founded, closes on 30 September, with shooting in early winter.
Jia says he feels close to the region and goes there often. He links the story to Dunhuang's past as a Silk Road gateway to the west and to how far the city lies from any ocean, which is the film's starting idea.
He has tried AI before. At the fifth Pingyao festival he worked with artist Xu Bing on AI-IF, a project that let visitors try making films with AI. The festival's AI activities were meant mainly as exhibitions and experiments, he says, and no film in this year's official selection was made with AI.
He calls himself cautious rather than hostile. The technology, he argues, should be understood and debated rather than avoided, now that its effect on the film business is so plain.
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