Acreditación de festivales de cine IA

Foreword

The International Federation of AI Film Producers’ Associations (IFAIFPA) publishes the AIFD catalogue of standards for the disclosure, identity and accountability of AI film production, and operates the accreditation schemes that assess conformity with them. Standards are drafted by the federation's standards function, exposed to public consultation, and adopted by resolution of the governing body. Requirements use the verb shall; recommendations use should; permissions use may. Notes and informative annexes do not contain requirements.

This document, AIFD-STD-FES-001 AI Film Festival Accreditation Requirements, was first published on 1 August 2024. The present edition was adopted on 20 April 2026. The revision history in the final annex records every edition and its principal changes. The English text is authoritative; le texte anglais fait foi.

Nothing in this document grants any right to use a federation mark, and no conformity claim may be made except through the assessment and decision process defined in AIFD-STD-REV-001 and recorded in the federation's public register.

0 Introduction

A festival asks filmmakers for their work, their money and their trust. Accreditation exists so that trust does not have to be blind: it is an independent, published finding that a festival's governance and operations meet stated requirements. This standard is deliberately strict about a small number of things — legal existence, honest rules, independent juries, funded prizes, creators' rights, disclosure, and a public record — and deliberately silent about taste. Accreditation under this standard says a festival is run properly. It never says a festival's films, or its awards, are good.

1 Scope

This standard states the requirements a festival operator must satisfy to obtain and hold IFAIFPA accreditation for a festival edition or period and a defined scope of operations. It applies to physical, online-native and hybrid festivals presenting AI film works. Accreditation is a conformity decision about governance and operations; it does not rank artistic quality and confers no right to speak for the federation.

2 Normative references

AIFD-STD-DEF-001, AI Film Definitions & Classification

AIFD-STD-PRO-001, Production Disclosure & Accountability

AIFD-STD-RGT-001, Rights, Provenance & Identity

AIFD-STD-REV-001, Independent Review, Complaints & Appeals

3 Terms and definitions

3.1 operator

Legal person responsible for the festival and party to the accreditation.

3.2 edition

A single occurrence of the festival, or the defined period stated in the scope of accreditation.

3.3 scope of operations

The activities covered by the accreditation: named festival, edition or period, sections, and delivery modes (physical, online, hybrid).

3.4 entry terms

The published conditions under which works are submitted, selected, screened and awarded.

3.5 vendor prize

Award funded, branded or juried by a supplier of AI tools or services.

3.6 surveillance

Federation verification of continued conformity during the validity of an accreditation.

4 The thirteen gates

Each gate is pass or fail. Failing any gate ends the assessment as a refusal; conditions may be attached to a grant only for matters outside the gates. Evidence expectations for each gate are consolidated in Annex A.

4.1 G1 — Legal existence

The operator shall exist as a legal person in good standing in its jurisdiction. Evidence: current government registry extract (issued within 90 days of application), constitutional documents, and identification of directors, officers and beneficial owners. Operators in formation, and unincorporated collectives, are not eligible; a fiscal sponsor does not substitute for the operator's own existence.

4.2 G2 — Named governance

The operator shall identify the natural persons responsible for programme, jury, awards and complaints, and maintain a reachable operating address and contact channel. Anonymous or wholly pseudonymous governance fails the gate. Changes of the named persons during validity engage clause 8.

4.3 G3 — Published rules

Entry terms — eligibility, categories, fees, refunds, screening rights, withdrawal terms and deadlines — shall be public before entries open, in every language in which entries are solicited, and applied as published. Mid-cycle changes operate prospectively only and are published with the same prominence as the original rules.

4.4 G4 — Creator-rights floor

Entry terms shall not take, as a condition of entry, selection or award: (a) assignment of copyright; (b) any licence to use entered works to train AI systems; (c) exclusive exploitation rights beyond festival exhibition; or (d) waiver of moral rights where waivable. Screening licences limited to the festival's editions and promotion are conforming. This gate is the strongest differentiator of the scheme and is verified against the actual entry terms, not summaries.

4.5 G5 — Disclosure enforcement

Entries shall carry classification and disclosure conforming to AIFD-STD-DEF-001 and AIFD-STD-PRO-001, and the operator shall verify declarations for all awarded works before award publication. Verification failures discovered after award engage the operator's published correction procedure and the federation's register where accreditation facts are affected.

4.6 G6 — Jury independence

Jury composition shall be documented; every juror signs a conflict-of-interest declaration; recusal rules are published; and no juror judges a work they were engaged on, hold rights in, or have a close personal or financial relationship with. Jury deliberations may be confidential; the controls around them may not.

4.7 G7 — Selection integrity

Selection criteria shall be stated; selection decisions are made by identified roles; where public voting contributes to any outcome, documented anti-fraud controls (identity limits, anomaly detection, audit trail) shall operate and be described in the rules.

4.8 G8 — Awards integrity

Announced prizes shall exist, be funded at announcement, and be paid or delivered within 60 days of public announcement unless the published rules state a shorter period. Evidence: prize list, funding evidence (account, guarantee or sponsor contract), and payment records for the previous edition where one exists. Non-payment histories fail the gate.

4.9 G9 — Complaints and appeals

The operator shall publish a complaints channel conforming to AIFD-STD-REV-001 clause 10 (acknowledgement within 7 days, written outcomes, records kept), covering entrants, participants and the public, and inform entrants of the federation's own appeal channel for accreditation-related matters.

4.10 G10 — Data protection and minors

Entrant and participant data shall be handled lawfully under applicable data-protection law, with a published privacy notice. Where minors participate — as entrants, subjects or attendees — documented safeguarding measures apply, including consent per AIFD-STD-RGT-001 clause 5.3 for any synthetic depiction.

4.11 G11 — Accessibility

The operator shall publish accessibility information for venues and platforms, and a contact for accommodation requests, and should caption or subtitle awarded works for public screenings under its control.

4.12 G12 — Vendor-conflict controls

Sponsors and AI tool vendors shall have no role in selection or awards outside prizes explicitly labelled as vendor prizes; vendor prizes are labelled as such wherever announced; vendor personnel do not sit on general juries; and paid placement of works is prohibited. The operator documents these controls and their operation.

4.13 G13 — Public record cooperation

The operator shall accept publication of the accreditation decision, scope, status and lifecycle events in the federation's public register, display accreditation status only by reference to the live register record, and cease all accreditation claims immediately on suspension or revocation.

5 Scope of accreditation

Accreditation names the operator, the edition or period, and the accredited scope of operations. Activity outside the stated scope carries no accreditation, and the operator shall not imply otherwise — including for co-branded events, satellite programmes and year-round activities not named in the scope. Co-organised festivals name every co-operator; the accreditation binds them jointly for the scoped activity.

6 Assessment

Applications are assessed under AIFD-STD-REV-001: completeness check, independent review with evidence sampling, and a two-person decision. The operator affords the reviewer access to rules, records, systems and, where proportionate, the event itself (physically or by access to the online platform). Refusals state reasons by gate and the appeal window.

7 Surveillance and renewal

Accreditation is valid for the period stated on the certificate, subject to surveillance. The federation may verify continued conformity at any time during validity, with notice proportionate to the matter, and shall do so on credible complaint touching a gate. Renewal is a fresh assessment; a clean surveillance and complaints history lightens sampling, never the gates themselves.

8 Changes during validity

The operator shall notify the federation within 21 days of: change of control or ownership; change of any G2 named person; material change to entry terms; addition or loss of delivery modes; insolvency events; and any judgment or regulatory action touching a gate. Unnotified material change is itself a non-conformity.

9 Suspension, revocation, withdrawal

Non-conformities found in surveillance or complaints are classified and handled under AIFD-STD-REV-001 clause 8: critical findings suspend the accreditation pending correction; uncorrected or repeated findings escalate to revocation. Voluntary withdrawal by the operator is recorded like any lifecycle event. Suspension and revocation are published in the register and remain permanently visible; identifiers are never reassigned. During suspension the operator shall not present itself as accredited in any medium.

10 Use of the accreditation mark

Marks are used only against the live register record, within the accredited scope and period, per the federation's published mark-use rules. Digital badges shall resolve to the status endpoint; static reproductions that would survive revocation are non-conforming by design. Print uses carry the register identifier so any reader can verify.

11 Transition between editions of this standard

Accreditations granted under an earlier edition remain valid to their stated expiry. Applications submitted after an edition's adoption date are assessed under the new edition; renewals are assessed under the edition in force at renewal submission. The adoption resolution states any longer transition for specific gates.

Annex A (normative) — Evidence matrix

Annex B (informative) — Application to online-native and hybrid festivals

Online-native festivals satisfy G1–G13 with these readings: the “venue” of G11 is the platform, whose accessibility statement covers players, captions and assistive-technology support; G7's anti-fraud controls are mandatory wherever audience voting exists; G5 verification uses delivered files and their hashes (AIFD-STD-RGT-001, 6.1); the reviewer's “site visit” is authenticated access to the platform during the event; and screening-security measures (geo-limits, DRM, watermarking) belong in the published rules, not in ad-hoc entrant correspondence. Hybrid festivals apply both readings to their respective components; the scope of operations names the modes covered.

Annex R Revision history

Bibliography (informative)

EUTMR (EU) 2017/1001, Articles 83–85 — certification marks.

US Lanham Act §14(5) — cancellation grounds for certification marks.

ISO/IEC 17065 — principles for bodies certifying products, processes and services (methodological inspiration; no conformity claimed).

Bibliographic entries situate this standard in its regulatory and technical landscape. They are informative only and create no requirement.