OPENFRAME AI LAB · IFFS SHIMLA 2026 · AWARD ANNOUNCEMENT
BEST AI FILM · 12TH INTERNATIONAL FILM FESTIVAL OF SHIMLA
Echoes of the Last Shelter.
Best AI Film.
IFFS Shimla 2026.
“Some prayers are not said but they are sheltered.”
| Film Echoes of the Last Shelter | Award Winner — Best AI Film |
| Festival 12th International Film Festival of Shimla 25–27 September 2026 | Supported By Ministry of I&B · NFDC Government of India |
| Directors Rajesh Bhatia & Bharat Arora | Producers Rajesh Bhatia · Bharat Arora Manu Bisht |
Echoes of the Last Shelter has won the Best AI Film award at the 12th International Film Festival of Shimla — a festival supported by the Ministry of Information & Broadcasting and NFDC, two of the most significant institutional voices in Indian cinema. For OpenFrame AI Lab, this is the first major festival recognition for a body of work that has been years in the making.
The award was presented at IFFS 2026, held 25–27 September in Shimla. The festival’s inclusion of a dedicated Best AI Film category is itself significant — it signals that Indian film institutions are beginning to formalise the space that filmmakers like us have been working in long before a category existed for it.
The Film.
Set against the high Himalayan passes of the north, Echoes of the Last Shelter is a meditation on the stone winter shelters that dot the mountain routes — anonymous structures built by no one in particular and maintained by everyone who passes through. They exist for the traveller who did not make it before dark. They keep people alive not through comfort but through bare adequacy. They are prayers made of stone.
The film does not tell a single story. It accumulates one — through the mountain, the pass, the shelter, and the woman whose face is inseparable from the landscape she inhabits. The tagline captures it precisely: some prayers are not said but they are sheltered. The shelter is the prayer. The act of keeping it open is the act of faith.
Echoes of the Last Shelter was created entirely using AI-generated imagery — every frame built from a visual language we have been developing at OpenFrame AI Lab since its founding. The film is not a demonstration of what AI can do. It is a film that happened to be made with AI, because AI was the tool that could render the scale, the cold, and the interior silence the story required.
“Some prayers are not said but they are sheltered.”
— Echoes of the Last Shelter · Tagline
The Festival.
The International Film Festival of Shimla, now in its 12th edition, occupies a particular place in the Indian festival circuit — a hill-town festival with institutional credibility, Ministry of Information & Broadcasting support, and NFDC backing. It is not a fringe event. Winning here, in a category that the festival has formalised, means that the jury saw AI filmmaking as a legitimate cinematic discipline — not a novelty, not a tech showcase, but a form.
That distinction matters to us. OpenFrame AI Lab was built on the premise that the tools are secondary to the intention — that an AI film, like any film, is only as strong as the story it chooses to tell and the craft brought to the telling. IFFS 2026 affirmed that premise.
The Team.
Echoes of the Last Shelter was directed and created by Rajesh Bhatia and Bharat Arora — the co-founders of OpenFrame AI Lab — and produced alongside Manu Bisht, a multiple National Film Award recipient whose involvement has shaped OpenFrame’s commitment to craft at every level of production.
Rajesh and I have been building toward this kind of work since we launched OpenFrame AI Lab — not chasing festivals, but making films we believed in and letting them find their audience. That this one found a jury that understood what we were doing is deeply gratifying. Manu’s contribution to the film’s emotional architecture was essential; this award belongs to all three of us.
Our gratitude to the jury and the organising committee of IFFS 2026 for recognising AI cinema as a category deserving of serious critical attention — and for giving this film the space to be heard.
“The shelter is always there.
The film is proof it was worth building.”
— BHARAT ARORA · OPENFRAME AI LAB · @TSTOP_PITCHERS
© 2026 OPENFRAME AI LAB · ECHOES OF THE LAST SHELTER · BHARAT ARORA & RAJESH BHATIA