Founders' Vision

Michael Swierczynski · President · Q&A

What is the story behind We Are Human?

 

The festival was born out of a sense of urgency. An urgency to respond to a world that feels increasingly fragmented by reclaiming dialogue and creating spaces for collective reflection. For years, I have worked alongside artists and creators exploring the relationship between technology and culture, at the INA, at the Forum des Images, and through the creation of an international festival dedicated to immersive experiences. I witnessed the arrival of generative AI as a profound paradigm shift. What struck me most was not the technology itself, but what was missing. Here were tools capable of reshaping creation, storytelling and our collective imagination, yet very few people were asking the most important question: what are they serving? We had the power. What was missing was meaning. We Are Human is an invitation to reconnect technology with human values. It takes the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, this foundational and universal text, and places it in dialogue with the creative practices of our time. The festival is a way of exploring how artists from around the world interpret these principles today, and what their creations reveal about who we are, the societies we are building, and the future we want to shape together.

 

Using AI to defend human rights. Isn't that fighting with

the enemy's own weapons?

 

I believe we have to work with the tools of our time, not out of naive enthusiasm, but because it's the only way to shape what they become. The alternative is leaving others to decide alone how these technologies are used. And those others don't necessarily share the same values. Just look at how certain powers are already using AI to automate control, concentrate decision-making, and homogenise narratives. So the real question isn't whether we use these tools. It's: who uses them, with what values, to tell what stories? This is what I call necessary subversion: transforming a technology of power into a vector of universalism. Reclaiming the tools, the narratives, the imagination.

 

AI-dedicated festivals are multiplying. What makes you different?

 

AI festivals generally take an aesthetic or technological angle. They showcase what the machine can do, and it's often impressive, sometimes beautiful. But it mostly remains a showcase, with no strong editorial vision, no long-term commitment, no ethics notebook. What sets us apart is that we don't celebrate the machine: we put it under scrutiny. And we do it over 30 editions, one article of the UDHR per edition. This isn't just a festival. It's a dialogue platform, a shift. Because we often see worlds that don't speak to each other enough, from the great technology fair to the film or arts festival, each in its own logic, its own audiences, its own language. We Are Human forces that encounter: creators, technologists, philosophers, geopolitical thinkers, in the same room, around the same works, confronting the same questions. And those questions are rooted in each territory: what we debate in Johannesburg about memory and reparation is not what we debate in Geneva about governance or in São Paulo about identity. The festival comes to them, with their contradictions, their history, their urgency. It also means workshops: acculturation, inclusion, to understand these tools and practice them. Not just watching, doing. Selected works travel across continents, are featured across multiple media platforms, and compete for three awards celebrating the creators whose work inspires critical reflection and explores the foundations of our common humanity.

 

AI's ecological cost, its structural biases. How do you

address them?

 

AI is not neutral. Every algorithm is, in some way, a political choice, trained on biased data, filtered through cultures, shaped by economic interests, and embedded with particular worldviews. We take this seriously, which is precisely why the Ethics Notebook is at the heart of the festival — not as a form to fill in, but as a work within the work. Each creator documents their choices, their sources, their doubts, the limits they encountered. That is our concrete response: full transparency, rather than posturing.

 

The question of creation threatened by AI is central to current debates. What is your response?

 

The fear is legitimate, and I work with authors, directors, and creators across all disciplines, I encounter it directly. But we need to put things in context: AI didn't arrive overnight. It was already there, in translation software, in 3D tools, in recommendation engines. What changed is that it became generative. And that's a shift, not a disappearance. Because co-piloting a creation with AI is not the same as automating art. If I hand you the best video editing software in the world, you don't automatically make a great film. What makes the film is the gaze, the intention, the authorial decision. AI accelerates creation, and it also opens real doors for creators who never had access to the same production resources: in Benin, in Colombia, in Vietnam, an entire generation can now produce with unprecedented freedom. On the question of rights, the current model needs rethinking, not to protect less, but to redistribute better. Several initiatives point the way: the opening of digitised public archives, open source movements, platforms for sharing cultural commons. Share to amplify, not surrender to disappear. And there is a broader question: cultural relativism. Some will say human rights are a Western construct. But no tradition, no culture, no narrative can reasonably justify torture, arbitrariness, the denial of dignity. The African Ubuntu, Confucian philosophy, the great spiritual texts of all civilisations converge on a common golden rule: respect for the life and dignity of the other. The 1948 UDHR did not invent these rights. It brought them together.

 

A final word. Why join the We Are Human adventure?

 

Because the world is told through the tools of its time, and it is up to us, creators, citizens, human beings, to decide the narrative. We Are Human is a collective adventure: films travelling from Paris to São Paulo, from Johannesburg to Geneva, carrying at each stop the questions each city knows in its own history, métissage, apartheid, exile, freedom. The festival doesn't come to impose a truth: it comes to open a space. To debate, to create, to see differently. And to win prizes too, because creation deserves to be recognised.

Elsa Swierczynski · Secretary General · Q&A

We Are Human claims to be open to everyone. Is that a stance or a deep conviction?

 

It's a conviction, and one that predates the festival. I have always believed that creativity is not a privilege. It doesn't belong to an artistic elite, to a particular territory, or to any one generation. What convinced me to commit to this project was precisely that: a festival that doesn't ask who you are before letting you in. Submitting to the open call is free, because supporting emerging talent and equal opportunity, across every region of France and around the world, is a concrete commitment, not a statement of intent. The goal is straightforward: open the door, and prove that it can be done. Talks and workshops are open to all. We don't filter, we welcome.

Free access, inclusivity. Are these political choices as much as editorial ones?

Absolutely. Understanding artificial intelligence, what it means, what it makes possible, where its limits lie, is a right, not a subscription. We all have something to say about the world we live in. We Are Human is the space to say it.

 

You are opening the festival to schools and community organisations. Why?

 

Because they are the ones carrying the future of these questions. A secondary school student who understands today how an algorithm works, who learns to question it rather than simply accept it, represents an entire generation shifting its relationship with the world. Community organisations are often the first to work with people who are distant from the digital world, people who cannot be reached through conventional channels. Including them means widening the circle of dialogue.

On November 24th at Forum des Images, you are offering open workshops. What does that mean in practice?

The idea is simple: come to understand and to do. Not to observe from a distance, but to get hands-on. We don't want AI to remain a black box reserved for those already in the know. These workshops are designed for everyone: the curious, beginners, professionals, young people and older ones alike. We work through the fears, show that these tools are genuinely accessible, and above all explore what becomes possible when you bring human intention to them.

 

What does your personal commitment to this project

mean to you?

 

I spent a long time working in organisations where mission came before everything else, where impact mattered as much as output. What keeps me in We Are Human is exactly that: a project with meaning beyond itself. We are not making a festival for the sake of making a festival. We are building something that challenges, that educates, that connects people who would never otherwise have met. It is that dimension, societal, human, collective, that makes me want to get up in the morning.

 

A word for those still hesitating to submit a film or take part?

 

Don't wait until you feel ready. AI gives access to creative tools that entire generations never had. You have a story to tell, a perspective on the world, a question that drives you. That is all it takes. We Are Human is made for you. For all of us.