June 2026 — A film about memory, silent cinema and the ghosts of early film wins the inaugural AI award at River Film Festival, Padova.
The River Film Festival is one of the most established short film festivals in the Veneto region, with twenty years of free screenings projected on a floating screen on the Piovego canal in Porta Portello, Padova. Mondo Novo’s relationship with the RiFF goes back to 2024, when The Dawn of Creation was selected for the official programme.
For its twentieth edition, the festival opened a new competitive section dedicated to artificial intelligence, the first in its history. Thirteen films were selected from international submissions and screened on 19 June. The jury, chaired by Brigitta Portier and composed of Alessandro Masi, Dubravka Lakić, and Reinhold Jaretzky, included Prof. Shin Kim of Hong Kong Baptist University, a scholar whose research spans cinema, creative industries, and the cultural implications of emerging media, a profile that made his presence on an AI jury particularly relevant.
Two Mondo Novo works were part of the 2026 programme: Paper Flowers in the Animation section, and Silent Echoes in the Intelligenza Artificiale section. Silent Echoes received the Golden River AI award, a handcrafted glass trophy made by Murano master glassmakers, at the closing ceremony on 20 June.
Silent Echoes had previously been selected for the 74th Columbus International Film + Animation Festival, North America’s longest continuously running film festival, marking the film’s North American premiere.
More information:
https://riverfilmfestival.org/archivio/20-river-film-festival-2026/ https://www.taxidrivers.it/539179/festival-di-cinema/river-film-festival-2026.html