AI Inspiration WorldAbout the film
I Can't Breathe is an experimental short by French visual artist Stéphane Tranquillin. It runs about four minutes and was posted on YouTube by the World AI Film Festival (WAIFF). The description says it shows a figure trapped in a closed space where the air seems to be running out, a film about physical and social suffocation. The images are deliberately dark, fragmented and grainy, with jerky movement meant to create distress and anxiety; the description places it somewhere between a music video and a manifesto, and the artist treats each shot as a "pulsation." The process is spelled out: he wrote the script first, used GPT to generate precise prompts to structure the story, made the images and animation with Sora in storyboard and recut modes, then did heavy cleanup and color grading in post. It was selected for WAIFF 2025's Best AI Film section.
Who it's for:viewers comfortable with oppressive, experimental images, and creators who want to see Sora used for a complete short.
Before you watch: free on YouTube, about four minutes, and the platform may show ads. The description is in French; YouTube offers auto-generated English subtitles, and we haven't listened to the audio. The film is built around oppression, anxiety and suffocation, and we haven't checked how intense the images get. No reuse rights are granted.
Based on the film's description on WAIFF's official YouTube channel. Watch the film itself for the full picture.
How AI was used
The description on WAIFF's channel says the script came first, GPT was used to generate prompts that structure the story, Sora (storyboard and recut modes) made the images and animation, and cleanup and color grading were done in post.
Sources checked; not a review or endorsement of the film.