International
Post Mortem and El Premio among awards
MUMBAI: Pablo Larrain‘s Post Mortem and Paula Markovitch‘s El Premio have shared top honors at the 26th edition of the Guadalajara International Film Festival.
Winner of best Ibero-American picture, Post Mortem is the third feature of the Chilean writer-director. Set against the background of Chile‘s 1973 military coup, the film centers on a twisted love story between a morgue clerk and an aging dancer.
Funny Balloons handles international sales for the Chile-Mexico-Germany co-production.
El Premio, aka The Prize took away the prize for best Mexican film. The film is the story of a mother and daughter who must go into hiding during Argentina‘s dirty war era.
El Premio had it worldwide premiere at the Berlin Film Festival earlier this year where it won two Silver Bears for outstanding artistic achievement in camera work and production design.
The film is Argentine-born writer-director Markovitch‘s first feature. Other awards handed out include the best director award for Fernando Leon de Aranoa‘s Spanish drama Amador and Mexican director Odin Salazar‘s Burros (Donkeys). Los Inadapatados (The Misfits), a comedy featuring segments from four different directors, bagged the audience award.
In the documentary section, Patricio Guzman‘s critically acclaimed Nostalgia de la Luz (Nostalgia for the Light) got an award in the Ibero-American category while director Jacaranda Correa‘s Morir de Pie (Die Standing Up) came out on top among the Mexican documentaries.
For best first fiction work, the juries chose to honour Sergio Teubal‘s dark comedy El Dedo (The Finger) for the Ibero-America section and Iria Gomez‘s Asalto al Cine (The Cinema Hold Up) for the Mexican competition.
International
Utopai Studios unveils 4K three-minute video generation for PAI platform
New Story Agent and editing tools aim to streamline AI-led filmmaking workflows
MUMBAI: Utopai Studios has announced a major upgrade to its PAI storytelling AI platform, introducing what it claims is an industry-first capability to generate three-minute videos in 4K resolution, alongside enhancements to its Story Agent feature.
The update, rolling out from April 15, expands the platform’s capabilities across the filmmaking process, from early concept development to post-production. The company said the new features are designed to help filmmakers maintain continuity across characters, scenes and visual styles, a key challenge in AI-driven storytelling.
At the heart of the release is a next-generation model that enables more structured narrative development, allowing creators to move more seamlessly from idea to execution. With tools such as multi-shot sequencing and multi-turn editing, the platform aims to give both studios and independent creators greater control over complex storytelling workflows.
Commenting on the launch, Utopai Studios co-founder and CTO Jie Yang said, “The next phase of AI in media will not be defined by isolated tools, but by systems that can carry story, continuity and collaboration across the full creative process.” He added that the update is a step towards enabling more practical, end-to-end narrative development at a professional level.
Echoing this, Utopai Studios co-founder and chief scientific officer Zijian He said, “Generative video is opening the door to a new production model, where creative ambition is less constrained by traditional cost and complexity.” He noted that the platform combines multimodal models with iterative editing to give creators more speed, control and consistency.
The company said PAI is already being used in professional film and television productions, particularly in Hollywood, for tasks such as pre-visualisation, scene design and post-production refinements. The latest update adds features including improved voice options, character consistency, unlimited editing and more flexible asset management.
Utopai also emphasised that its models are not trained on copyrighted material, positioning the platform as a cleaner alternative for creators and rights holders navigating the evolving AI landscape.
As AI continues to reshape content creation, Utopai’s latest push signals a shift from standalone tools to integrated systems, aiming to make high-quality filmmaking faster, more flexible and increasingly accessible.
