CloudWalk short film made with AI wins awards at film festivals in the U.S. and Poland
“Arnaldo Had an Idea” wins Best International Short at the AI International Film Festival, in Los Angeles, and was featured at Subtelny Cinema, in Warsaw
The short film Arnaldo Had an Idea, produced by CloudWalk Studios and created entirely using artificial intelligence, has won two international awards: Best International Short at the AI International Film Festival, held in Los Angeles, United States, and placed third in the Best AI Short Film category at the Subtelny Cinema and AI Festival in Warsaw, Poland.
In addition to the awards, the production received honorable mentions at film festivals in Rome and Milan, Italy – the Rome AI Festival and the Absurd Film Festival, respectively – consolidating its presence in the European circuit dedicated to new audiovisual languages.
Directed by Ricardo Mordoch and Dan Moraes, the short is inspired by the short story O Mouro e a Micose by Marcos Barbará, with a screenplay co-written by Fernanda Jaber, Marcos Barbará, and Ricardo Mordoch. The film blends humor, existentialism, and aesthetic experimentation to explore the boundaries between human and artificial creation.
The narrative follows Arnaldo, a man who, in a dusty pawn shop in Casablanca, Morocco, has the idea of his life, but cannot find a pencil to write it down. From that moment on, a frantic search unfolds, crossing markets, inner deliriums, and metaphysical reflections. What begins as a revelation turns into a tragicomic journey about the fragility of ideas and the impossibility of fully capturing them.
“It is a story about the exact moment when something extraordinary appears and disappears. It speaks to the fragility of thought, the urgency of recording an idea before it dissolves into the chaos of the world and the mind,” says Dan Moraes, one of the film’s directors.
“Arnaldo is born from this threshold between revelation and loss, reason and delirium, and stands out for its creative use of artificial intelligence not only as a tool, but as an integral part of its narrative language,” adds co-director Ricardo Mordoch.
Arnaldo Had an Idea is part of the catalog of original productions from CloudWalk Studios, an initiative by the technology company CloudWalk that invests in the convergence of technology, art, and storytelling. The short film can be watched exclusively on CAISROOM, CloudWalk’s streaming platform dedicated to audiovisual works developed with artificial intelligence, which features dozens of productions from more than 14 countries.
The film has already been screened at several festivals around the world, including the Bali International AI Film Festival, in India, and the Peshawar International Film Festival, in Pakistan. It has also been selected for the Berlin Indie Shorts Festival, taking place in the German capital in February.
With its international awards and honorable mentions, the short reinforces CloudWalk’s role as a leading force in the creation of new frontiers for AI-driven cinema, placing Brazil at the center of global discussions about the future of audiovisual storytelling.
