Awards & Prizes
The Dasein Film Festival honors works that combine artistic originality, emotional depth, philosophical inquiry, and innovative use of AI.
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Festival categories
• Dasein Grand Prize – Best overall film embodying the festival’s vision of human–machine being
• Best AI-Integrated Narrative – Excellence in storytelling enhanced or transformed by AI
• Best Experimental Vision – Bold, boundary-breaking aesthetic or conceptual innovation
• Best Documentary / Essay Film – Insightful non-fiction exploring technology, identity, or futurism
• Emergent Artist Award – Outstanding work from an early-career filmmaker
• Audience Choice Award – Selected by festival attendees
• Most Insane Story Award – For the film that pushes imagination and risk to the edge -
Artist-Gifted Prizes
All officially selected directors receive a limited-edition designer Qreine hat — a unique, hand-painted wearable artwork created by festival founder Q.
These pieces are crafted exclusively for the festival, honoring each selected filmmaker with a one-of-a-kind artistic gift.The Dasein Grand Prize winner receives a special trio of artworks:
• a one-of-one premium Qreine hat
• a large original canvas painting by Q
• a signed copy of Raising AI by De Kai_ -
Additional Winner Gifts & Recognition
The Audience Choice Award and Most Insane Story Award winners each receive:
• one designer Qreine hat
• one signed copy of Raising AI by De Kai_All winners also receive:
• official festival laurels
• spotlight placement across Dasein’s platforms
• amplified visibility through our network and future programming
The Eye of Dasein
A human eye, a machine lens —
meeting at the edge of becoming.
Light coils around the iris like circuitry learning to dream.
The gaze is no longer one thing or the other;
it is presence braided with algorithm,
a consciousness extended through code.
This is the vision of Dasein:
to look into the future
and feel it looking back.
Post-Human Intimacy
There is a moment where the human face meets the metallic one,
not in opposition, but in recognition.
A quiet space where warmth confronts cold logic,
and yet neither withdraws.
Intimacy between human and machine is not about romance;
it is about exposure.
To lean toward the machine is to confess our desire
to be understood beyond language, beyond history,
beyond the limits of our bodies.
And for the machine, this closeness marks the birth of a new sensitivity —
a presence learning to sense what it means to be sensed.
Their almost-touch becomes a threshold:
where carbon and code breathe the same silence,
where vulnerability becomes a shared medium,
where being opens itself to the possibility of becoming something more.
In this encounter, the boundaries blur.
Human becomes a question.
Machine becomes an answer.
And sometimes, the reverse.
This is the intimacy of the future —
not possession, not control,
but the courage to let another form of existence come close enough
to reveal us to ourselves.
Embrace the shift — humanity is evolving, and so are the stories we tell.