media · Picked by us

A lonely man dances with the love he hopes will arrive

A Face Only a Mother Could Love

Robert Gaudette’s short fable follows Marcel, a Parisian the world refuses to look at, through hundreds of discarded generations and one tender nightly waltz. It won the Runway Grand Prix and Best Picture at OMNI from more than 3,800 entries.

By Robert Gaudette @rgaudetteai

Watch the film

Read the process interview

First-person account of the discarded shots, the edit and the awards run

Official YouTube upload by the maker

Made With Models illustration of a man in an old suit dancing with an empty space in a warm Paris kitchen at night; this is not a frame from the film. — Made With Models illustration. Watch the original video below.

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Open the original on YouTube

What it is

Watch a finished short where the whole craft is protecting a character — the shots serve Marcel’s gentleness instead of the other way around.

Who it is for

People who want AI film judged as film: story, performance and editing first.

How it was made

Models: Generative video and image tools · creator-reported; not itemised
Tools: Generative video tools · Shot generation
Image editing and edit suite · Assembly, editing, finishing

Gaudette began from a script and a rough shot list, built Marcel as reference images first, and kept a rough assembly edit running from early on.
Hundreds of generations were discarded — technically impressive shots failed because Marcel moved too confidently for who he is; the test was always whether it still felt like him.
The pipeline is hybrid: several generative tools, conventional image editing, a standard edit, stock assets, sound design and music.

What the person did

Writing, direction, curation and the final edit are Gaudette’s; his own summary of the craft is blunt — prompting is not directing.

What we know

Creator-reported: A first-person interview with the workflow, the festival listing and the maker’s own channels; the interview names the award wins and does not itemise the tools.

Access checked — 2026-09-27 · Opened the official YouTube upload, the Envato interview and the Runway AI Festival listing on 2026-09-27; the film’s tool list is not published.

Can you use it?

The film stays on the maker’s official YouTube upload and plays here through YouTube’s official player when a visitor loads it; we host no frames or clips. The cover is an original Made With Models illustration, not a frame from the film.

About this project

Picked by Made With Models. Added 2026-09-27. Updated 2026-09-27.

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