EXCLUSIVE: Igor Alferov’s Thanksgiving Day, a intergalactic tale about a bear and a platypus, has taken the top honor at the Frame Forward AI Animated Film Festival. The short film was the winner at the AI film festival’s first edition and will now get a two-week national theatrical run through Screenvision Media.
The film follows a bear and his platypus assistant who are travelling through the galaxy in a spacecraft that looks like a dumpster. They have to deal with corrupt space-cops, hygiene officials, and a very unusual type of food delivery service as the story unfolds. Kazakhstani filmmaker Alferov used AI tools including Gemini 3.1 and Nano Banana Pro to make the short.
We previously reported on the Frame Forward fest and its jury, which included industry names such as David Dinerstein, Richard Gladstein and Julina Tatlock. The festival was organized by movie theater advertising specialist Screenvision and immersive content outfit Modern Uprising Studios.
Use of AI in production remains a thorny subject at an industry level, but what is not disputed is how AI tools are increasingly being used in movie-making. As the winning Frame Forward project, Thanksgiving Day will now have a release and a trailer screened across Screenvision’s network and get support from Modern Uprising Studios.
“Thanksgiving Day is a masterclass in original storytelling, a wildly inventive journey that balances sharp satire with unexpected emotional payoff, proving that bold imagination with the tools of AI compliments the future of animated filmmaking,” said Joel Roodman, President and Head of Studio for MUS.
Jurist Neil Parris from Google’s 100 ZEROS, added: “Thanksgiving Day is an imaginative and funny short, showcasing AI’s ability to unlock imagination for animated storytelling.”
The winning project was chosen through a combination of jury selection and a public vote. Other finalists included Mingdi Li’s The Pillar, which tells the story of a civilization that has, for generations, worshipped an impossibly tall pillar, until, one day, an unimaginable force threatens everything they know. So Close Yet So Far from Taiwanese filmmaker, Lynn Tsai, also made the final three. It follows a crane and an ape and is billed as an exploration of an endless pursuit without fulfillment.
