Shanghai, China – September 29, 2026 – Shanghai concluded its inaugural “City Love Letter, Create the Future” 100-Hour AI Micro-Drama Creation Contest on September 24 at the CMG Integrated Media Cinema, a deadline-driven competition designed to test whether generative AI can withstand the demands of a full production pipeline — from concept and script to visual generation and final delivery — within roughly four days.
The contest drew 316 applications from 171 individual creators and 145 teams, close to 600 participants in total, representing 27 provinces in China as well as creators from North America, Europe and Southeast Asia. According to organizers, the participation profile shows that AI is lowering the traditional barriers of filmmaking, attracting creators across industries, educational backgrounds and regions, with those aged 23 to 28 forming the core of the field.
Unlike most competition formats that end with the review of finished submissions, this edition required 15 shortlisted teams to produce a complete work within a fixed schedule. Each team developed an AI-generated micro-drama around one of five themes drawn from local identity: Xuhui landmarks, Shanghai’s urban transformation, the city’s Shanghai-style cultural spirit, urban dreams, and the course of China’s development. The format was designed to mirror real industry conditions rather than a studio competition, testing speed, quality and the practical limits of AI-assisted production at scale.
During the production phase, teams applied a range of current AI tools: AI-simulated performers, automated animation generation, 3D scene construction and detailed text-prompt engineering. Two distinct approaches emerged. Some teams relied on substantial compute resources and extensively written prompts to build layered, ambitious narratives, aiming at large-scale city storytelling. Others used minimalist prompts and lighter compute, focusing on local culture with leaner resources — a contrast to the industry tendency to equate scale with quality.
Eight awards were presented for seven winning works. “The Emotion Agency,” from the Shanghai Film Academy at Shanghai University, received the top prize for a story that reads urban humanity through the lens of emotional life. “Shanghai 2000s” won second place and the Best Cultural and Tourism Creativity Award for recreating a thousand years of the city’s atmosphere through AI. Three works shared third place — “The Unfinished Light,” “Leaving Xuhui, She Took Only Three Things” and “SHANGHAI FOLDS Ten Layers · A Century” — spanning lyrical mood, local narratives and large-scale urban storytelling. “XiaXia·Nong,” a portrait of the city’s warmth, received the Highest Export Potential Award, while “Yelda” won the Best Xuhui Feature Prize for its grounding in the district’s character.
Beyond the contest itself, organizers positioned the event as a working laboratory for Shanghai’s AI content ecosystem. A dedicated city tour route passed through Xuhui heritage sites — the Hengfu historical district, the Xujiahui Library, Longhua Ancient Temple and the riverside arts cluster along the Huangpu River — converting the district’s layered history into source material for AI creators and linking cultural dissemination with generative production.
The city is expanding support for this format. With municipal and district-level policy backing added to a national push for AI applications, the contest partnered with SenseTime to provide dedicated workspaces, high-speed compute and professional equipment, together with mentorship covering both film craft and AI technology. SenseTime, which organized the event, said the goal was not simply to prove that AI can make films, but to test whether the technology can reshape the production relationship at the heart of content creation — moving the industry from capital-intensive, high-barrier models toward lighter, more accessible workflows without compromising aesthetic standards or emotional depth.
About Us
Dumbo Culture Communication (Shanghai) Co., Ltd. is focused on new media content, film production and cultural event operation. Committed to empowering cultural communication with cutting-edge digital technologies, we have developed and delivered numerous large-scale cultural projects across cultural tourism and AI creative sectors. We host *City Love Letter, Create the Future*, an international AI micro-drama competition open to creative practitioners globally. The competition invites creators to harness generative AI tools to explore urban culture and tell authentic, heartfelt city stories via short video narratives. It gathers cross-disciplinary talents to explore innovative integration of AI technology and visual storytelling, and fuels the growth of the AIGC creative ecosystem.
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Company Name: Dunbo Feixiang (Shanghai) Cultural Communication Co., Ltd.
Contact Person: Ye Zixuan
Email: Send Email
Country: China
Website: https://whlyj.sh.gov.cn/
