Muscat AI Film Festival

Connection

Where humans, machines, and cultures connect through storytelling.

A creative prompt for the edition — not an eligibility filter.

AI is changing how stories are made — but storytelling has always been about connection. Every era of cinema has had a defining moment and a defining place: a city, a studio, a stage where something new took shape. As AI cinema emerges as its own creative frontier, it has no home yet — and Muscat has the opportunity to become one.

Muscat sits at the intersection of the Gulf and the wider world, in a nation whose identity is built on dialogue, collaboration, and connecting cultures. That makes it the natural home for a festival where technology meets creativity, ideas cross borders, and people from every filmmaking tradition come together around a new kind of storytelling.

MAIFF was created to be the region's first — and Oman's largest — AI film festival: a launchpad for Omani creators, a meeting point for global studios and platforms, and a public celebration that brings AI cinema out of the lab and onto the screen, culminating on the stage of the Royal Opera House Muscat.

Every major shift in cinema has had a place where it took shape — a city and a community that gave a new kind of filmmaking its first real stage. AI cinema is the next such shift, and it doesn't yet have a home.

MAIFF is built to be that home: the region's first AI film festival and Oman's largest, positioned at the point where AI tools meet cinematic storytelling, where creators and studios and platforms connect, and where projects move from idea to screen. With 30+ countries invited, 500+ creators expected, and a global jury and advisory board drawn from major streaming platforms, production houses, and AI research, MAIFF is designed from year one as an international platform rather than a regional showcase.