The Fracture by Jacopo Reale Wins Best Direction at Astana AI Film Festival 2026
Jacopo Reale, director and AI Creative Director at Labyrinth Reply, has won the Best Direction Award at the Astana AI Film Festival 2026 for The Fracture, a short film written and directed by Reale and produced by Animatix.ai and Labyrinth, with art direction by Giacomo Cannelli and Alessandro Risuleo.
Now in its inaugural edition, the Astana AI Film Festival is an international festival dedicated to cinema and emerging forms of audiovisual production enabled by artificial intelligence. Films were assessed by an international jury not only on their use of AI tools, but also on their artistic vision, storytelling quality, overall coherence, and ability to integrate technology into the creative concept.
Set in 1515, The Fracture tells the story of Queen Anna, who awaits her husband's return from war. When the king finally returns to court, he is a profoundly changed man, haunted by inexplicable visions. As Anna tries to understand what has happened to him, she encounters a mysterious fracture in reality whose consequences will echo across the centuries.
The short film was created entirely using artificial intelligence tools, while drawing on the skills and production practices of traditional filmmaking, from narrative development and editing to sound design and mixing. In this approach, AI becomes one of the tools available to filmmakers throughout the creative process, while storytelling, pacing, editing, and the overall construction of the cinematic experience remain central.
The award also comes at a time of growth for Labyrinth Reply, the new Reply Group company dedicated to AI-generated film and audiovisual productions, established by bringing together the creative and production expertise of Labyrinth Studio with Reply's technology ecosystem. The company combines generative AI tools with traditional filmmaking expertise to develop new creative approaches and production workflows for the film and entertainment industries.
The Fracture was also selected as a finalist at the World AI Film Festival in Cannes and the AI Film Fest Monaco earlier in 2026. The film demonstrates how this approach can be applied in practice, with AI tools playing a central role in the creative and directorial process, from the initial concept through to the production of the finished film.
Reply Labyrinth
Labyrinth Reply is the Reply Group company specialising in film and audiovisual production, bringing together creativity, filmmaking expertise and AI technologies within a unified production process. By joining the Reply Group, Labyrinth Studio’s creative and production capabilities are combined with the Group’s technology ecosystem, infrastructure and specialist expertise, expanding its ability to develop fully AI-generated and hybrid productions by integrating 3D, virtual production, animation and generative technologies across the entire production pipeline.