Mountain of Graves, a ten-episode drama made entirely with AI filmmaking platforms by the South African company DragonStudios.ai, has been named a finalist at the Neu Wave AI Film Festival, which runs as part of LA Tech Week. Winners of the festival's Topwave Vertical Films Competition will be announced in Santa Monica on 14 October.
The series was commissioned by Buka Africa and written by the studio's creative leads Donovan Marsh and Steven Cholerton together with writer Phuti Lehong Buka. Made in a vertical, phone-first format that suits the growing market for mobile drama, it follows two brothers trying to stop a mining company from taking the mountain where their ancestors lie buried.
Marsh comes from conventional filmmaking: he wrote, directed and edited the South African features Spud, with John Cleese and Troye Sivan, and iNumber Number, and directed the Gerard Butler and Gary Oldman thriller Hunter Killer. He argues that generative tools can carry African stories to international viewers by producing scenes, effects and whole films for far less than traditional methods, alongside real locations and actors where those are used.
Bizcommunity notes that two other DragonStudios.ai projects in development, Dragon Hunter and Bad Muti, have already been recognised abroad. The festival bills itself as a meeting point for filmmakers and technologists working on AI storytelling, and its Los Angeles setting puts the series in front of the wider Hollywood industry. Bizcommunity presents the nomination as evidence that small teams outside the big production centres can now attempt cinematic work without a full studio behind them.
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