Turkish AI production company Spongeworthy, the pioneering studio behind buzzy AI-generated doc “Post Truth,” has announced their second AI movie, titled “A Woman Asleep.” The company will be shopping it to buyers at Berlin’s upcoming European Film Market.
“A Woman Asleep,” to which Variety has been given exclusive first trailer access (watch above), is a piece on contemporary alienation inspired by the 1974 cult French film “The Man Who Sleeps,” directed by Bernard Queysanne and Georges Perec. That movie, in turn, was based on Perec’s novel “A Man Asleep.”
The AI feature film, which examines contemporary alienation and numbness in today’s world of hyper-connectivity, will mark the directorial debut of artist and filmmaker Vikki Bardot. Her AI short “Dreamt by Another” screened in more than 20 festivals and was recently acquired by Mubi for Turkey.
Bardot is partners in the Spongeworthy studio with Turkish director and artist Alkan Avcıoğlu, who created the groundbreaking AI doc “Post Truth.” The doc delves into man’s relationship with technology and has been making the festival rounds after making a splash at the Warsaw Film Festival and getting a theatrical release in Turkey. “Post Truth,” which was co-written by Avcıoğlu and Bardot, will be in competition at the upcoming Fantasporto International Film Festival in Portugal.
The script for “A Woman Asleep” is penned by the same duo as “Post Truth.”
The narration for “A Woman Asleep” is generated using an AI voice clone trained on the director’s own voice. “This choice extends the film’s conceptual framework and dreamlike qualities, allowing the narration to exist in a space between the human and the synthetic, consistent with the world the film portrays,” the promotional materials say, citing the storytelling approaches of Alain Resnais, Michelangelo Antonioni, Chris Marker and Apichatpong Weerasethakul as references.
“The dominant narratives around AI in the media tend to revolve around Hollywood, budgets and click-driven debates,” Bardot said. “What remains underestimated is the sheer potential these tools offer for independent cinema and auteur-driven storytelling.”
Bardot recently served as a panelist on AI filmmaking at Saudi Arabia’s Red Sea International Film Festival. She is regarded as one of the early practitioners of photographic AI art and video art series. She delivered a TEDx talk on AI and art in 2023, and her artworks have been exhibited worldwide, including New York, Paris, London, Berlin, Rome and Miami.
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