About this Event
Stardust Future Special Oscar Qualification Screening
Get ready for an exclusive in-person experience with Stardust Future Special Oscar Qualification Screening! It's the perfect chance to catch this cinematic gem before the buzz hits big. Join fellow film and animation enthusiasts for this special advance screening of a future Oscar contender!
From visionary filmmaker and multimedia artist Yi Zhou comes Stardust Future: Stars and Scars, an 82-minute animated feature created entirely with artificial intelligence — a sweeping odyssey that merges art, sound, and consciousness into one continuous experience. Following the documentary Chronicles of Disney and the original song Rising Sun at the Edge of the Ocean, Zhou reunites with Jeremy Renner in a narrative that examines time, memory, and rebirth within a cosmic framework.
The journey unfolds across galaxies, dreams, and symbols — from stardust to scars, from destruction to divine creation — a meditation on survival and transformation. The film features original music by Yi Zhou, Ennio Morricone, and Into the Sun Collective, with new arrangements that expand Morricone’s visionary work into an immersive sonic landscape of memory and renewal.
Narrated by Jeremy Renner and Yi Zhou, and featuring the 3D likeness of Diane von Fürstenberg, the film bridges past and future through a rigorously crafted visual language.
Inspired by the Qatsi Trilogy by Godfrey Reggio and the music of Philip Glass, Zhou’s latest work transforms that lineage into a new visual meditation for the AI age — using machines not as replacements for human vision, but as mirrors revealing our collective past and possible futures. Through rhythm, silence, and symbolism, Stardust Future extends the Qatsi spirit into a cosmic dialogue about time, technology, and transcendence. Spanning from the birth of the universe to the year 2080, the film reflects on environmental collapse, the erosion and rebirth of justice, and the restless evolution of human consciousness. At its core lies a timeless question: as technology pushes us toward the threshold of immortality, can we rediscover the harmony and law of life itself?
A new visual grammar. The film pioneers a deliberate fusion of 2D and 3D AI animation as a unified language — combining the emotional intimacy of 2D imagery with the spatial depth and sculptural movement of 3D space. Each transition is designed to mirror the movement between memory and matter, dream and reality. While some animated works have blended techniques in the past, to our knowledge no prior feature-length film has been created entirely through AI using this intentionally integrated 2D/3D structure, positioning Stardust Future as the first of its kind. This dual-style narrative is purpose-built — not a convenience — serving as an intentional storytelling grammar and conceptual framework trademarked by Yi Zhou.
Themes. Environment, destruction, war, and immortality unfold as a tale that spans from origin to imagined future — cycles of creation and collapse, and the enduring human search for meaning within both chaos and light.
Event Venue & Nearby Stays
Laemmle Glendale, 207 North Maryland Avenue, Glendale, United States
USD 0.00
