La Ciotat, the French town where the Lumière brothers filmed their famous train arriving at the station, will host the first SHAIKE Film Festival on 2 and 3 October 2026. The venue is the Eden Théâtre, billed as the oldest cinema still operating, and the question the organisers put up front is what place cinema has once AI can make images. Its twist is a single competition in which films shot with cameras and films generated entirely by AI go before the same jury and are judged by the same artistic and storytelling standards.
The stated aim is to see how the new tools change the way films are made and told, and to ask what directing a film even means now. Organisers say more than 450 films from over 40 countries were submitted for this first edition.
The jury is chaired by Olivier Dahan, director of La Môme. Alongside him sit actor-director Eric Judor, Jacques Malaterre, who made the documentary L'Odyssée de l'espèce, Anne Richard of the TV series Boulevard du Palais, Les Bronzés producer Yves Rousset-Rouard, and Seb Caudron, a visual effects supervisor on John Wick: Chapter 4. Stéphane Barbato, Mike L. Bivins and festival founder Jeremy Angelier complete the panel.
The town is backing the event, which sees it as a way to tie its film heritage to the industry's future and present itself as a place for innovation in visual arts. Its mayor, Alexandre Doriot, pitched it as cinema reinventing itself where it was born. On 2 October, La Chaudronnerie hosts a day of talks and meetings for professionals, followed that evening by the awards ceremony at the Eden.
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