The OMNI International AI Film Festival has announced the 23 winning films selected for OMNI 1.5 “HYPERPHANTASIA”, presented by Envato. Standout winner selections from countries across the globe, including Canada, the USA, the UK, Brazil, Ukraine and Australia, will be screened in Sydney at The Collider in Haymarket on July 3, 2026. Marking OMNI’s third major call for entries, the festival received five times the submissions of OMNI 1.0 held in November of 2025. The 3,800+ films from creators around the world ranged from sci-fi dystopias and romantic comedies to short documentaries and full-length feature films. Unlike other film festivals, OMNI only screens films in person, bringing human-made, AI-assisted cinema into cultural environments and live audience settings. In its first year of screenings, the Sydney-founded festival has already welcomed more than 16,000 attendees to in-person events globally, including screenings across Australia, China, Japan, India and Switzerland. OMNI Co-Founder Travis Rice says the calibre of this year’s entries showed that AI filmmakers are not just testing new tools, the films reflect the rapid evolution of AI cinema from technical experiment to a serious storytelling medium, with creators using generative tools to explore questions of identity, climate anxiety, agency, humour, memory, and human emotion.

“We had an incredible amount of content to sift through to surface the best of the best, with so many impressive films that our judging panel had to debate deeply to determine the excellent ones,” Rice commented “What stood out was how clearly AI filmmakers are grappling with the same challenges we are all facing in this moment of technological acceleration, from questions of human agency and authenticity to environmental disaster and climate anxiety. These stories feel ripe and ready to be told by new voices from the edge, from traditional filmmakers and advertising creatives to newcomers who have never had the chance to bring their visions to screen. I’m incredibly hopeful to see stories of optimism, curiosity and change reflected in this evolving artistic medium, and it’s exciting to see Australians keeping pace, with some of the best films coming from right here in Sydney.”

This year’s winners were selected by a jury led by acclaimed director Alex Proyas, best known for directing The Crow and I, Robot, alongside a global judging panel assessing the works for human-crafted storytelling, cinematic ambition and extraordinary visuals, including Yan Chen, CEO of Aurora AI; Clayton Jacobson, Australian film director; Thea-Mai Baumann, futurist and Director of 4A Centre for Contemporary Asian Art; and Professor Toby Walsh, AI expert and United Nations advisor. On the calibre of films OMNI is seeing, Co-Founder Aryeh Sternberg shares, “The tools are advancing so rapidly, and because of this, we have introduced a new category, Award for ‘AI Performance’, to the upcoming 1.5 festival. It’s truly mind-blowing what these tools are capable of producing with human guidance, to the point some entrants needed to confirm their films were truly AI generated.”

OMNI 1.5 “HYPERPHANTASIA” is presented by Envato, a global leader in creative technology and a Shutterstock subsidiary, empowering millions of creative professionals with commercial-ready stock assets and purpose-built AI capabilities. “Hyperphantasia” is inspired by the neurological phenomenon characterised by mental imagery so vivid it can rival real-world perception. For OMNI 1.5, it serves as both an aesthetic benchmark and a creative provocation: what becomes possible when the barriers between imagination and image collapse entirely? More Information.