“Dreams of Violets,” which premiered last week at the Tribeca Festival, is the first movie generated entirely by AI to be programmed at a major film festival — and it’s also the first movie generated entirely by AI that I’ve seen. As such, those of us at the premiere were really watching — and evaluating — two films at once. The first is a drama, set in Tehran, written and directed by the expatriate Iranian Ash Koosha (who is now a London-based tech entrepreneur), that depicts the days of protest and crackdown and state-sanctioned killing that took place five months ago, in January, as waves of Iranian citizens poured into the streets to register their anger at the country’s theocratic regime. I didn’t find that movie to be particularly effective. In fact, after a while I thought it was stultifying. 

But the other movie, which is far more interesting and significant, is the one that demonstrates, simply by virtue of its existence, what some of the possibilities might be for the use of AI within the world of feature filmmaking. This is a delicate and dicey subject to even bring up, since the industry right now is in the grip of multiple perceptions and anxieties about what AI portends for the future of entertainment. And all of this is changing by the week. Just look at how quickly we went from Steven Soderbergh, in April, ruffling feathers for admitting that he used AI to craft fantasy sequences for his documentary “John Lennon: The Last Interview” to Martin Scorsese — as moral and respected a voice as there is in the industry — signing on, at the beginning of June, to partner with the German generative-AI firm Black Forest Labs in order to speed up the storyboarding process. Darren Aronofsky has now crossed the AI barrier as well, using it to make a series of web videos about the Revolutionary War.

These, of course, are all baby steps. But the baby is going to grow up. And what will it look like when it does? “Dreams of Violets” offers indications of at least a few of the places that AI, as its symbiosis with the industry grows and gathers force (which it surely will), might go.

But first, an aesthetic question: Is “Dreams of Violets” a weirdly distant and unsatisfying movie because it was made with AI? The strange answer to that is yes, but not really. It’s actually the form of the movie that’s odd and off-putting: a barely scripted series of anecdotes, or mere moments, with little in the way of dramatic development. Ash Koosha based the film on journalistic reports, photographs, and eyewitness accounts, and it’s clear that he wanted it to feel like we were watching scenes from a documentary, which sounds like a valid impulse. (Plenty of movies, including last year’s combat docudrama “Warfare,” have been staged that way.) But though the characters in “Dreams of Violets” look and talk like real people, and the rubble-strewn urban streets look and feel like real rubble-strewn urban streets, we’re barely given a context for what we’re seeing: soldiers killing civilians with random cruelty, which is the heart of the movie — at least, for the first half, after which it becomes less severe and even less interesting.

If you see a soldier killing a civilian in a documentary, it’s horrifying, but the effect is 100 times less powerful in a film that simply looks like a documentary, since we know, in our gut, that we’re not watching reality. That’s why the quality that draws us into a movie, even if it is a documentary, is the connection we feel to the people we’re watching. But Ash Koosha hasn’t scripted “Dreams of Violets” that way. He has made a movie with an uncanny-valley problem, an “existential” drama that’s all “authentic” but abstract moments: the vérité political-war-movie equivalent of calendar art. It’s like synthetic prize-winning photojournalism that moves.

At the time of the January protests, some observers thought the Iranian regime would topple (the Iran War has now made it clear what a naïve belief that was). But “Dreams of Violets” is not a days-of-rage tale of inspiration. It’s set after the protests have already been contained (the country’s police are doing a clean-up operation), and what it offers, mostly, is raw snapshots of state-sanctioned murder and political oppression. Yes, we “get to know” half a dozen characters — a boy in a wheelchair, his physician older brother, a reminiscing old woman, a music student, and several others. But Koosha doesn’t create fully realized scenes.

When “Dreams of Violets” played at Tribeca, the justification for the film — the reason given by Koosha to make it entirely with AI — is that it couldn’t have existed otherwise, and that the figures we’re seeing onscreen are all based on real people. Maybe that’s true, but effective art needs no justification. If you wanted to be cynical about it, you could say that Ash Koosha is exploiting the tragedy of his homeland to have the best possible excuse to craft an AI showreel. His company builds AI-based characters and has also played with using AI to generate pop music. In “Dreams of Violets,” he’s like the creator of Tilly Norwood pretending to be the director of a movie like “No Other Land.”

But if “Dreams of Violets,” as a movie, is mostly a bust, as an AI showreel it’s something more. Several critics have nitpicked visual flaws in the film’s design, but from moment to moment what I saw in “Dreams of Violence” looked plenty textured and realistic. Does this mean that AI can “make a movie”? No. But it does mean that AI can give you scenes of roiling tumultuous Civil War set in the hurly-burly of Tehran at sunset, with soldiers roaming the streets and forcing citizens into vans as others scurry out of the way, and it can make you believe your eyes. And here’s the buried lead: The film’s entire budget was $2,000. I don’t want to be the bearer of bad news, but the most powerful message to emerge from
“Dreams of Violets” isn’t that the Iranian regime is a ruthless pack of totalitarian oppressors. It’s that $2,000 can now buy a hell of a lot of motion picture.

What if the object of your desire was also the thing that’s trying to kill you? Not slowly irritating you to death for leaving the toilet seat up again. We mean actively trying to strangle you.

That’s the intriguing premise behind the horror-satire “Leviticus,” an auspicious feature film debut for writer-director Adrian Chiarella that’s both deeply scary and a queer revolt.

Named for the book of the Old Testament often used to justify homophobia, the movie explores the burgeoning relationship between two young men that is shattered when so-called “conversion therapy” — a scientifically discredited practice — unleashes a demon that stalks them. Some have called the movie “It Follows” meets “Heated Rivalry,” but that’s a disservice to Chiarella’s ambition.

The film centers on Naim (Joe Bird, the breakout star of A24’s “Talk to Me” )and Ryan (newcomer Stacy Clausen), who we watch fitfully, awkwardly fall for each other, slowly exploring their sexuality and stutter-stepping into their true selves. Wrestling turns to flirtation, which becomes longing and tenderness.

That doesn’t go over well in the small Australian town where the movie is set, a blue-collar community with belching smoke stacks, low-slung houses, barking dogs and a Christian pastor — with a “deliverance healer” — who prefers his flock much more heterosexual.

Chiarella is leaning not only into the notion that sexual desire makes you vulnerable, but also the harm that repressing who you are can do. In this case, the demon takes the form of your crush. It has weaponized lust.

“You shouldn’t be near me. I shouldn’t be near you, either,” one of the would-be lovers says to the other.

Chiarella starts his movie with a nod to Alfred Hitchcock — a shower scene worthy of “Psycho” — and nods to others in the genre, like “A Nightmare on Elm Street.” He can be a bit clunky with his images — a frog being eaten by a snake — but his pacing is flawless and his ramping up of terror is sure. “Leviticus” might be an indie film, but it’s got the blessing of Frank Ocean, who gave the filmmakers the right to use his song “Self Control.”

The monsters — in addition to the nasty one only the boys can see, of course — are the adults: the parents and caregivers and friends who turn on vulnerable, scared young men and make them scared of each other. Mom might kindly take some disliked olives off her son’s pizza, but she won’t accept him kissing another boy.

Chiarella’s pro-queer filmmaking extends to his ability to perfectly capture the fumbling ecstasy of new love, the fierce longing of stolen kisses and how scary it is to submit to a new partner. Kudos to Bird and Clausen for capturing that universal feeling.

With his film, Chiarella forms a triumvirate of young filmmakers making horror brilliant in summer 2026, alongside Curry Barker with “Obsession” and Kane Parsons’ “Backrooms.” The future of movies is in good hands.

“Leviticus,” a Neon release that’s in theaters Friday, is rated R by the Motion Picture Association for “bloody violent content, language, some sexual content and teen drug use.” Running time: 88 minutes. Three and a half stars out of four.