Veteran Sundance Award-Winning Filmmaker Rafal Zielinski Launches Film Art Planet AI — A New Human-Centered Approach to AI-Driven Independent Cinema

Los Angeles, CA — Veteran independent filmmaker Rafal Zielinski, a Sundance award-winning director with more than 25 feature films to his name, today announced the launch of Film Art Planet AI, a new production initiative designed to unlock decades of unrealized storytelling through a hybrid model combining human creativity with artificial intelligence. 

Zielinski, whose career spans acclaimed festival films and commercial releases, has long operated on the fringes of the traditional film industry. “This initiative is not about replacing artists,” he says. “It’s about finally telling the stories that could never get financed—stories I’ve carried for years.” 

Film Art Planet AI is built around a simple philosophy: films with a human touch. While AI tools are used to streamline production and expand creative possibilities, the emphasis remains firmly on story, character, and emotional resonance. 

“I’m not using AI because I love AI,” Zielinski explains. “I’m using it because I love storytelling—and because traditional financing structures have made many deeply human, timeless stories nearly impossible to produce.” 

A Slate Built on Timeless Intellectual Property 

Over decades, Zielinski has developed a substantial library of original screenplays and intellectual properties, many written in collaboration with a close circle of playwrights and writers rooted in theater. Several projects are adapted directly from stage works, echoing the director’s earlier films that successfully bridged theatrical intimacy and cinematic scope. 

“What I’ve always tried to write are classic stories—stories that don’t date,” Zielinski says. “They’re just as powerful now as when they were written, and I believe they’ll remain so.” 

The planned slate spans psychological science fiction, drama, musical, and speculative narratives, exploring themes such as consciousness, reincarnation, war, ethics, love, life after death, and humanity’s evolving relationship with technology. 

A New Production Model: The Renaissance Atelier 

Film Art Planet AI adopts a Renaissance atelier model, inspired by historical workshops where master artists collaborated with apprentices and associates to produce ambitious bodies of work. 

Rather than developing one film at a time, Zielinski aims to assemble rotating teams of collaborators—writers, AI artists, editors, designers, and performers—working in parallel under a unified creative vision. This approach is designed to enable the production of multiple feature films per year, without sacrificing artistic cohesion. 

“Independent filmmakers are usually forced into one-off projects,” Zielinski notes. “You raise money, make a film, fight for distribution, burn out—and then start again from zero. This model is meant to break that cycle.” 

Crowdfunding Strategy and Investment Structure 

The initiative is launching with a Regulation CF crowdfunding campaign, with a minimum initial target of $50,000, the lowest viable budget to produce a first feature at a fully AI-driven level. 

The primary fundraising goal of $1.235 million would allow for the production of three to seven feature films, depending on the degree of live-action integration. A longer-term target of $5 million would enable production of up to 24 feature films, with an additional expansion phase envisioned for marketing and self-distribution. 

Minimum investment begins at $100, with a cross-collateralized portfolio structure designed to spread risk across the full slate rather than individual titles—an approach more common in venture portfolios than traditional independent film financing. 

First Feature: Alma 

The first project under Film Art Planet AI is Alma, a psychological science-fiction feature told across three interwoven timelines. 

Depending on funding levels, Alma can be produced: 

• Fully AI-generated with human voice performances at approximately $50,000

• As a hybrid live-action / virtual production at $250,000

• Or at intermediate levels combining both approaches

This scalable methodology will be applied across the slate, allowing each film to adapt creatively and financially without compromising its core vision. 

Technology as a Tool, Not a Replacement 

Zielinski brings a longstanding interest in technology to the project, informed by his academic background at MIT and decades of experimentation at the intersection of art and innovation. 

He is careful to position AI as a tool, not a substitute for human expression. 

“Actors are extraordinary collaborators, and I love working with them,” he says. “But actors, like cameras or lenses, are also instruments of storytelling. What ultimately drives cinema is the writing, the characters, the ideas.” 

Drawing parallels to Shakespearean works such as Hamlet, Zielinski argues that great stories transcend any single performer. “The debate about replacement misses the point. Sometimes, to keep telling stories at all, you have to work outside the system.” 

An Invitation to Participate 

Film Art Planet AI seeks participation not only from individual supporters but also from strategic partners, corporate investors, and venture capital interested in scalable, IP-driven independent cinema. 

“If the industry can’t fund certain stories,” Zielinski says, “we have to invent new ways to tell them.” 

More information about Film Art Planet AI and the crowdfunding campaign is available via the official fundraising page: 

https://wefunder.com/filmartplanet