DISRUPT: AI Film Festival reveals judging panel

DISRUPT: AI Film Festival (DAIFF), Australia’s first national GenAI film festival, has today announced its inaugural judging line-up: a formidable collective of leaders spanning creativity, academia, technology, and the arts. Together, they represent the cross-industry coalition shaping Australia’s creative-tech future, ensuring we develop the skills and capability here, rather than importing them.

Judging Panel

• • Ant Keogh, Artist and Co-Founder, Kerfuffle
• • Fletcher Watson, Co-Founder, Wildfire Content
• • Jessie Hughes, Senior Creative Technologist, Leonardo.Ai
• • Lucinda Barlow, Senior Director, Head of International Marketing, Uber
• • Luke Eid,Global Chief Innovation Officer, Omnicom Advertising Group
• • Lyn Norfor, Director of Production & Facilities,AFTARS
• • Max Schleser,Associate Professor, Film & Television, Swinburne University of Technology
• • Melanie Silva, Managing Director & Vice President, Google Australia & New Zealand
• • Paul Reardon, Chief Creative Officer, TBWA\Melbourne (Jury Chair)
• • Reece Goodwin,Film and TV Curator, ACMI

Anchored by TBWA\Australia, with founding partners Leonardo.Ai, Google, BMW, RMIT University, Swinburne University, AFTRS, Holding Redlich and the National AI Centre, DAIFF brings together enterprise, academia, technology, and legal expertise to build a national pipeline of creative and technical talent fluent in responsible AI storytelling, a fast-emerging growth sector in Australia’s $16 billion screen and technology economy.

The 2025 theme, Humans and Their Tools, explores the evolving relationship between human imagination and the technologies we forge to express it, with a focus on three core pillars:

• • Talent Discovery: Finding and nurturing the next generation of creative storytellers.
• • Human Storytelling: Proving that bold ideas thrive when technology is guided by human intent.
• • Transparency: Embedding authorship and disclosure as non-negotiables, with every entry required to list the AI tools used.

Says Kimberlee Wells, CEO of TBWA\Australia: “This panel is more than a judging line-up; it is a national brains trust. Each juror represents a piece of the creative-tech puzzle we must solve to stay competitive, imaginative, innovative, educated, and ethical. Together, our judges will help define what responsible, disruptive AI storytelling looks like, and how Australia can lead it.”

Says Paul Reardon, Chief Creative Officer and Jury Chair: “The film festival is designed to showcase the talents of human story tellers. But just as importantly, it’s an interrogation of AI itself — where it excels, where it fails; what it should and not be used for. As we work our way through all this, the right use of AI needs to be heavily scrutinised, at the same time as human creators are celebrated. To ensure this happens, our jury was assembled of key thinkers in creativity, film, art, technology, and education. Each juror brings a unique lens but shares one belief: tools don’t tell stories, people do.”

The judging panel will evaluate submissions across creative, technical, and ethical dimensions, rewarding originality, transparency, and the art of collaboration between human and machine.

Categories

• • Best Short Film – under 3 minutes
• • Best Long Film – 3 to 15 minutes
• • Best Student Film – under 3 minutes
• • Grand Prix Winner: selected from overall category winners

Prize Pool: $15,000
Submissions: Open to all Australian-based creators
Deadline: Extended to 30 October 2025 @11.59pm
Winners Announced: 26 November 2025 at ACMI, Melbourne

For more information, visit www.daiff.com.au.