Casting Anna

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  Casting Anna

'CASTING ANNA'

A screen test.

“I want to be free. I’m going to be a famous violinist in Paris.”
But freedom isn’t cast — it’s remembered.

'Casting Anna' is an experimental and meta-fictional short film and casting process — the first phase of a larger cinematic project inspired by a series of books, "The Tales of Anna Hoffman".

We’re not just casting a character.
We’re resurrecting an era.

Anna is a contradiction. A rebel. A scandal.
A search for the Anna who can burn through the screen.

Grief without pity.
Wit with fire.

AI performers audition to become her.
Each tries to wear her skin: too digital, too square, too young...

“I am an existentialist.”
“Slower. Let the line ache.”

'Casting Anna' explores the blurred lines between memory, myth, and machine. "She already lived the ending. We’re just playing it back."

🔸 Directed by KEZIAI
🔸X: @keziabarnett
🔸 Instagram: @keziabarnett @keziairt
🔸 More: keziai.keziabarnett.tv

PROCESS

Inspired by meeting Anna Hoffman shortly before her passing—and the wild, magnetic stories of her life—I began with the intention of making a trailer. I hold the rights to her books, 'The Tales of Anna Hoffman', and wanted to honor her voice by bringing her back to life onscreen.

But in the tests, something stranger and more compelling surfaced. The process itself became the story: a casting session with no living actor, only machines trying (and failing, and trying again) to inhabit a woman who refused to be defined even in life.

Working across multiple AI tools, I experimented with faces, voices, styles, and performances—discovering how easily Anna kept slipping out of reach. That friction became part of the piece. The challenge wasn’t generating her image, but capturing her complexity and contradictions with any consistency: her wit, her danger, her tenderness.

So 'Casting Anna' evolved into an experiment, an inquiry into resurrection in the age of AI, and the limits of performance with current AI tools.

A screen test for a woman who left the frame too soon.

Built With

• ai
• film
• resolve