By Aalia Lanius for UNSUGARCOATED Media

From my vantage point at the Fairmont, the buzz was back. But beneath the surface of every AI pitch and financing handshake lay an industry grappling with an irreversible transformation.

The American Film Market is back in Los Angeles. After a brief, awkward stint in Vegas, the heartbeat of the independent film business returned to its hometown from November 11-16, 2025, pulsing through the gleaming halls of the Fairmont in Century City. The energy was palpable, a marked contrast to the quiet anxiety of recent years. AFM 2025 was busy. The deals were being discussed, the parties were packed, and the collective will of the industry to move past the pandemic and the strikes was undeniable.

But one question shadowed every handshake, every pitch meeting, every optimistic projection scrawled on a cocktail napkin: Where will the money come from? Production costs have soared while returns have cratered. The mood stayed defiantly positive—this is Hollywood, after all, the business of manufacturing hope. But the underlying desperation was unmistakable.

And right now, the industry’s answer to that desperation seems to be Artificial Intelligence.

The AI Bazaar: A New Frontier of Efficiency… and Anxiety

This year, AI wasn’t a futuristic concept; it was a bazaar. You couldn’t walk ten feet without a company promising an AI solution: AI for accounting, AI for instant dubbing and video adaptation, AI for script analysis, AI for visual effects. At one booth, a founder breathlessly explained how his platform could “generate a complete marketing deck in under five minutes.” At another, a sales rep demonstrated real-time accent modification for international distribution. The gold rush is on, and everyone is staking a claim.

The desperation driving this gold rush is quantifiable. As Tobias Queisser, co-founder and CEO of The Cinelytic Group, pointed out during our conversation: 80% of films made are never shown. Only 4% of films break even on their budget. These aren’t just statistics—they’re an indictment of an industry that has, until now, operated largely on gut instinct and relationships.

It was in this context that I sought out Queisser. In a sea of hype, his company represents a specific, grounded vision: “utility AI.” His background gives him unusual credibility—a film director turned investment banker who then produced films, he saw the industry’s pain points from multiple angles. His tools aren’t about generating scripts but about forecasting performance and modeling complex financial waterfalls. Cinelytic now operates five different platforms along the value chain, serving everyone from writers and creative executives to finance teams and marketing departments. The promise: get from an idea to a business plan to present to potential investors in 20 minutes instead of four days.

This is the promise of AI at AFM: empowerment through efficiency. It’s the idea that by automating the grind, we free up creators to create. But as a Strategic AI Advisor, and a former implementation specialist who helped shepherd the medical industry from paper to digital records, I see the hard reality beneath the promise. This isn’t just an upgrade; it’s a fundamental restructuring of work.

The Hard Truth: Reskilling or Redundancy?

My conversation with Queisser rightly touched on the anxiety. He advocates for an open mind, warning against being the “horseman that goes on strike” instead of learning to “drive a cab.” He urges the industry to move past what he calls “a very uneducated discussion” where “AI is all one thing” and “AI is bad.” His analogy is pointed: “I go to work using maps, right? I’m not driving using a paper map anymore. But do I want a self-driving car that drives completely autonomously? Maybe not.”

He’s correct that adaptation is the only path forward. And his distinction between utility AI (the GPS) and generative AI (the autonomous vehicle) is useful for understanding where the technology actually is versus where the panic suggests it might be.

But having led technological transitions before, I know the human cost this euphemism can obscure. The shift from paper medical records to EMRs wasn’t just about learning new software; it was about eliminating entire categories of clerical work and forcing a redefinition of roles for nearly everyone in the building. Medical records clerks didn’t become strategic health informatics consultants. Some retrained. Many left the industry entirely. The euphemism of “reskilling” flattened a painful truth: technological transitions create winners and losers, and the losers rarely write the press releases.

The parallel is stark. When an AI can generate a business plan in 20 minutes that previously took four days, what happens to the entry-level executives and analysts whose job it was to build those plans? The promise is “higher-level strategy.” The hard truth is consolidation and a painful, necessary reskilling that many will struggle to navigate. You will always need a human to oversee the work, but you will need far fewer humans to do the work.

The ROI Mirage and the Creative Firewall

This moment feels eerily similar to the dot-com boom—or, as Queisser himself put it, like “the early days of the internet.” Everyone is launching an “AI-powered” solution, and the market is frothy. The return on investment for these tools is the central, often unasked, question for many small producers. Is the hefty annual subscription to an AI forecasting platform worth it when you’re producing two films a year? Is this a necessary cost or a costly distraction? The salespeople at AFM had polished answers; the producers in the hallways had doubts.

Furthermore, amidst the panic, it’s crucial to draw a clear line. The nightmare scenario of an AI generating a coherent, emotionally resonant feature film is still a long way off. As Queisser acknowledged, “telling a 90-minute story to get people really engaged for 90 minutes is hard. It’s not easy.” Continuity—in narrative, character, and visual style—remains a massive hurdle for generative AI. Right now, AI can be useful for short films, but a full-length feature that holds an audience? “I think it will take a while until that’s possible,” he said.

The creative core of storytelling, for now, has a firewall. The immediate disruption is not to the director’s chair, but to the producer’s spreadsheet, the sales agent’s forecast, and the post-production house’s budget. As Queisser put it: “The tools only enhance the quality of the people.” This isn’t about replacing creatives—not yet. It’s about making the business of film more efficient. Whether that efficiency comes at an acceptable human cost is the question the industry doesn’t want to confront.

The New Capital of Film is Data

AFM’s purpose is to bring the global industry together to see what’s available. This year, what was available was a stark vision of the future. The capital of the film industry is no longer a place. It’s data. The new currency is algorithmic confidence.

The buzz at the Fairmont was real. It was the sound of an industry in flux, embracing tools it hopes will be its salvation. The conversations about AI were not just about technology; they were about survival. Queisser’s advice echoes throughout: “Have an open mind. Really think about what are the critical pain points, what’s out there. Just having an open mind, because with AI, there’s a very uneducated discussion in the industry.”

He’s right. The path forward requires more than just optimism; it requires an honest assessment of the costs, a commitment to ethical implementation, and a clear-eyed focus on preserving the irreplaceable human spark at the center of it all. The industry must educate itself, distinguish between utility and hype, and understand that “AI is not good or bad. AI is just a tool.”

The market has spoken: adapt or be left behind. But here’s the question no one at the Fairmont wanted to ask: In our rush to make filmmaking more efficient, more data-driven, more algorithmically confident—are we building an industry that still has room for the irrational, inefficient, gloriously human act of making art?