‘Artificial’ about OpenAI’s Sam Altman to premiere at New York Film Festival

Luca Guadagnino’s Artificial, a film about OpenAI founder Sam Altman, will have its world premiere at the New York Film Festival on October 5.

Variety reported the news exclusively.

The film was acquired by Neon after Amazon MGM withdrew from the project, CE Report quotes ANSA.

Guadagnino and the cast, including Andrew Garfield, Monica Barbaro, Yura Borisov, Ike Barinholtz, Cooper Hoffman, Jason Schwartzman and Chris O’Dowd, are expected to attend the premiere.

Artificial stars Garfield as Altman and focuses on the events of 2023, when OpenAI’s CEO was controversially fired and later reinstated by the AI giant. Barbaro plays Mira Murati, OpenAI’s former chief technology officer, who later left the company. Borisov portrays OpenAI co-founder Ilya Sutskever, who was involved in Altman’s removal and has also since left OpenAI. Barinholtz plays Elon Musk. The film’s producers include David Heyman, Jeffrey Clifford, Guadagnino, Jennifer Fox and Simon Rich.

Artificial has become one of the most talked-about films of the season. In June, near the end of production, Amazon MGM announced that the film would benefit from being distributed by another studio. The decision came shortly after Amazon and OpenAI signed a major partnership involving a $50 billion investment. Altman also attended Amazon founder Jeff Bezos’ wedding in 2025. Several studios, including Mubi and Focus, had expressed interest in the film before it was acquired by Neon.

Dennis Lim, artistic director of the New York Film Festival, described the film as an intelligent and thought-provoking work that captures how society reached the brink of the AI abyss, combining a clear and unsettling perspective with dark humor and a sense of existential urgency.

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