5 Minutes
Andrea Iervolino launches a virtual auteur
Italian producer Andrea Iervolino, known for high-profile credits such as Ferrari and To the Bone, has announced a bold new project: The Sweet Idleness, a feature film directed — in name and system — by an AI called FellinAI. Billed as an experiment in marrying human sensibility with machine creativity, the project arrives at a moment when generative AI is pushing at every boundary of film and visual art.
The Sweet Idleness imagines a near-future society where only 1% of people still perform work, and the remaining majority subsists on leisure enabled by automation. The surviving workers stage labor as a symbolic ritual; they become a kind of ceremonial resistance against the erosion of meaning by machines. Iervolino says the film is meant to "celebrate the poetic and dreamlike language of great European cinema," a nod that helps explain the name FellinAI — a subtle tribute to Federico Fellini and the stylistic lineage of lyric, surreal storytelling.
What is FellinAI and how does it work?
FellinAI is part of Andrea Iervolino Company AI, the tech arm of Iervolino’s production group. The system is described as a director in algorithmic form — a pipeline that generates creative decisions, story beats, visual palettes and even shot-level planning. Iervolino positions himself as the "human-in-the-loop," supervising, curating and steering the AI rather than letting it run unchecked. Scenes are shot with real performers whose digital likenesses are created by Actor+, Iervolino’s in-house agency that supplies the virtual stand-ins used by FellinAI.
A teaser trailer has been released, but no release date has been announced. The production model leans heavily on hybrid collaboration: actors, VFX teams and an overseeing producer together shape a film whose formal choices are influenced by machine learning models trained on a wide corpus of cinematic works.
Industry context and controversy
The announcement comes in the wake of heated debate around synthetic performers — notably the AI-created "Tilly Norwood," which prompted public pushback from actors and unions. SAG-AFTRA and performers like Emily Blunt voiced concern that synthetic characters trained on the work of living artists could undercut careers and erode the human experience at the heart of acting. Iervolino insists The Sweet Idleness is not intended to replace traditional cinema, framing FellinAI as a creative tool rather than a substitute for human directors.
This is part of a larger trend: studios and indie producers alike are experimenting with AI for previsualization, script analysis, and even automated color grading. Where earlier phases of digital filmmaking democratized tools for image-making, this new moment raises questions about authorship, consent, and the ethics of training models on existing creative work.
Comparisons, influences and what to watch for
Tonally, The Sweet Idleness seems to sit closer to arty science-fiction and speculative fables — think of films like The Lobster or A Field in England that use surreal premises to interrogate social rituals. Compared with Iervolino’s past movies, which have ranged from biopic-scale storytelling to glossy drama, FellinAI’s promise is more experimental: it’s not simply a different director but a different method of decision-making.
Behind the scenes, the use of Actor+ to create digital likenesses recalls debates around deepfakes and digital resurrections of performers; unlike projects that reconstruct dead stars, Iervolino’s approach reportedly uses actors consenting to digital doubles. That distinction may be crucial to how audiences and unions respond.
"This project is emblematic of a tipping point in cinema," says cinema historian Marko Jensen. "It doesn’t simply test a new tool — it tests the relationship between craft and machine. Whether audiences accept a machine-directed aesthetic will depend on how transparently and ethically the work is made."
Critically, The Sweet Idleness will be measured on two fronts: artistic merit and industry impact. A film that genuinely harnesses AI to expand cinematic language could be hailed as innovative. One that recycles established styles without clear human authorship may intensify calls for regulation and stronger protections for performers.
For film lovers, festivals and critics, the real intrigue will be watching how an AI-informed vision reads on screen. Is FellinAI a new auteur with a coherent voice, or a collage of learned patterns mimicking cinematic poetry? Either way, Iervolino has opened the door to a public experiment — and the reaction, creative and political, will be part of the story.
Watch the teaser and keep an eye on release updates. Whether or not FellinAI signals the future of directing, The Sweet Idleness is already proving invaluable as a conversation starter about authorship, technology and the future of filmmaking.
Source: deadline
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