Oh boy. Three months after Martin Scorsese became the most respected filmmaker alive to publicly back generative AI, his name is now attached — as executive producer — to a festival title getting panned for being overrun with the stuff.
The film is "Trees Are Watching," Bahman Ghobadi's Turkey-set psychological horror starring Eva Green, which world premiered Friday in TIFF's Centrepiece programme. Green plays Darya, who returns to Mardin with her Deaf daughter and finds herself menaced by an ornately carved chair.
Variety's review is brutal on the AI front, arguing the movie eventually becomes "a product of typed-in prompts rather than real, intelligent artistry." The critic, Siddhant Adlakha, notes it isn't just establishing shots and connective tissue — whole strands of flashback mythology are rendered entirely in AI, with textures the review calls "repulsive."
Shots barely fit together as the film goes on, with anything except isolated closeups of human faces not only suspect, but downright insulting to watch, as “Trees Are Watching” becomes a product of typed-in prompts rather than real, intelligent artistry.
The kicker: Adlakha suggests it may be time for a total ban on major festivals programming films that use the technology, and argues audiences deserve some kind of disclosure before they buy tickets. And the review explicitly singles out Scorsese for lending his weight to the project as an executive producer.
Which brings us back to June. That’s when Black Forest Labs — the German AI startup — unveiled Scorsese in a promo video using its FLUX model to generate storyboards. A week later, the Art Directors Guild responded with a statement accusing Scorsese of "turning his back on the human artists" who helped build his career. His team later arranged a private call with ADG president Dina Lipton; a follow-up discussion reportedly stalled.
At the time, the defense — mine included — was that Scorsese was talking about pre-production, and by his own account he's been drawing his own storyboards for 70 years. No job would be lost, since he'd just be replacing himself. In his statement on Black Forest Labs' site, he said he was interested in the intersection of technology and storytelling and how it could push the bounds of creativity, and that cinema is a “young medium we have to remain open about.” Fair enough.
That said, an executive producer credit like Scorsese's on Ghobadi's film is usually meant to lend prestige, or help a film get seen. Optics are optics. And the timing here is atrocious.
It’s not just Variety either, the other reviews haven't been much kinder. Zack Snyder's "The Last Photograph," which one critic called one of the worst films ever to play the festival, still has TIFF 2026's worst-reviewed slot locked up, “Trees Are Watching” seems to be the runner-up.
Garland's script is written. Boyle called it "fantastic" in that same interview, Murphy says he's ready, and Boyle wants to direct. All that's missing is the money.