For many young directors today, it has become possible to create images, worlds and moods alone, quickly and with very little resistance. With a prompt, they may draw on references from filmmakers who have already won awards, built careers and spent decades finding their voice.
AI changes how work can be made. It does not change why collaboration, process and shared responsibility matter. When so much can be generated and resolved early in the process, the need for creative partners and shared decision-making can easily be overlooked. Originality rarely appears in perfect conditions. It emerges where something goes wrong, where a plan fails, and where people are forced to think together.
This is often where the role of the producer becomes clearer. Ideas are challenged and transformed through dialogue and shared decisions, especially when the ideal solution is not available.
The unexpected has been central to filmmaking. Not as a mistake, but as a gift. Champagne was not invented as an idea. It was the result of a “failed” fermentation, a process that did not behave as expected and, over time, became something extraordinary. Many of the things we later celebrate as originality are born the same way. Not planned, but discovered.
Rikke Katborg & Anke Petersen
Producers, Young Director Award
When young directors today may build their work primarily by prompting from existing references, we risk skipping that space. The space where a voice is not borrowed, but formed. Where something becomes personal because it could not be solved in the obvious way. This is where the producer’s responsibility lies: not in rejecting technology, but in insisting on process and asking the uncomfortable questions. Why this reference. Why this choice. What are you trying to say that has not already been said.
This is also why the Young Director Award matters more than ever. YDA was created by producers, not to celebrate tools or trends, but to protect the moment where a director is still becoming a director. It exists at the beginning of a career, when uncertainty, doubt and experimentation are not weaknesses, but the very material from which a voice is formed. In that spirit, YDA takes another step in 2026 by opening, for the first time, a category for first feature films. Not to chase scale, but to follow the reality of how directing careers grow across formats and over time, with the same need for dialogue, challenge and trust.
We often say that a film is made twice, once on set and once in the editing room. The second creation happens through distance, reflection and re-negotiation, through fresh eyes and difficult conversations. If everything is already generated, optimised and locked before that moment, we lose more than collaboration. We lose discovery.
Technology is a powerful tool. But voices are still formed between people. Protecting that space has always been the producer’s role. That shared responsibility is also what led to the creation of Friends of YDA, initiated together with YDA’s ambassadors, a community formed from within the industry by people who believe that protecting process, dialogue and emerging voices is something we do together, not alone.
We want to thank those who already support Friends of YDA and have contributed, and we welcome everyone who wants to stand behind the next generation of young directors.
This reflection is shared as YDA enters its 29th edition.
Submissions are now open.
Go make films and keep artistic intelligence alive.
