AIGC short Xiang Lu wins special award at Jinji Festival

The animated short film Xiang Lu won the "Special Recommendation Across the Strait" award at the seventh Jinji Youth Short Film Festival, part of the 2026 Jinji Baihua Film Festival. It is the only award of its kind given in the section, and it recognizes a work made with generative artificial intelligence.

The story draws on the popular belief in the deity Chi Wang, shared by communities on both sides of the Taiwan Strait. From there, the short brings that cultural legacy into contemporary animation, with family relationships and the fate of its characters as the narrative core.

Scene from the short film Xiang Lu: a person watches the sunset over the city next to a decorative dragon.sohu.com

It is not a documentary about rites or a folklore lesson. Xiang Lu uses the visual imagination of animation to turn ideas like protection, wishes, and emotional attachment into something today's audiences can feel. The tradition is not explained: it is lived through the characters.

Artificial intelligence in service of the story

The other major point of Xiang Lu is its production. Generative artificial intelligence took part deeply in the creation of the work, but not as a visual gimmick. The team wanted the technology to respond to the emotion of the story and the cultural meaning, not the other way around.

To achieve that, they combined the aesthetics of Eastern art and the visual elements of folklore with AI tools. The result is its own visual system, with an art direction that explores how traditional Chinese culture can be represented under new conditions of image production.

A university project with IP ambitions

Xiang Lu was born at Nanjing University of the Arts. Professor Xue Feng is credited as executive producer and general supervisor, while direction falls to professor Han Xu and production to Xu Kailong. The university led the project's development and brought in veteran producers for the script and story planning.

The animation production was carried out together with the Chuzhou Technical and Vocational Institute, under a model in which professors and students worked together through the whole process. The stated goal is to polish an intellectual property with commercial potential, thinking about its possible development as a cultural IP.