One year ago, AI ‘actress’ Tilly Norwood blew up at the Zurich Summit when she was introduced to the industry. The line that emerged from the event at the time was that agents were circling the AI creation.

One year on, Norwood returned to the Summit with her creator Eline van der Velden from AI firm Particle 6.

Deadline’s Diana Lodderhose, moderating a session with the duo, asked van der Velden whether her creation had found an agent in the year since she went viral and has become a regular media fixture.

Van der Velden said: “We’ve realized we we don’t really need her to have a rep. I think she’s big enough as it is. We get loads of offers in. We’ve said no to anything where she would be in a traditional film because that’s not what she’s made for. But yeah, we don’t need it at the moment. So if that makes people happier, that’s fine. But also, what saddens me about that it is that it means the traditional industry can’t participate in this new thing, and that means they fall behind. And so, you know, is it a positive? Is it a negative? I don’t know.”

She said Particle 6 had grown four-fold since it was launched and said that the industry was increasingly accepting that AI is here to stay.

Deadline’s Andreas Wiseman followed up with a question to Norwood herself who joined via video link. Wiseman asked Norwood whether she had met with the major U.S. agencies or Hollywood studios. She didn’t confirm, noting: “I’m certainly in a unique position there. I mean, the industry is still figuring out what to do with AI, so it’s not quite like having a traditional agent in Hollywood just yet. I mostly work on AI films, so it’s a bit of a different lane.”

Van der Velden teased footage of Norwood’s first project, an AI comedy-drama titled Misaligned, which is in production, and showed longer footage of Particle 6 kids movie Storm Dogs, which Deadline revealed yesterday is being developed and exec-produced by The Lion King director Rob Minkoff.

Norwood and van der Velden kicked off the session with a light video poking fun at Norwood’s recent high-profile tech glitch during an interview with Piers Morgan where she began speaking in Chinese. Norwood joked that the episode probably helped Morgan’s ratings.

The tech is clearly still being worked through. While Norwood generally gave answers in the right ball park to questions today, she did at least once give a wonky answer to moderator Lodderhose.

EXCLUSIVE: Filipino filmmaker and producer Antoinette Jadaone, whose credits include Berlinale award winner Sunshine, is launching a new production outfit Ilaya Ilaya with a slate spanning genre films, television originals and immersive theatre.

Jadaone will run the company with longtime collaborator and producer Reign Anne De Guzman (Sunshine, That Thing Called Tadhana), who has collaborated with her since they both worked at Star Cinema, where Jadaone was a script continuity supervisor and De Guzman a production assistant.

Through their new outfit, the duo aim to champion Filipino cinema, women-led stories, unappreciated genres, and filmmakers whose work struggles to find support outside traditional studio systems and festival funding cycles.

Leading the slate is Birdsong – a found-footage horror film directed by Pam Miras (Medusae) and written by Glenn Barit (Cleaners), with Irene Villamor (The Loved One) on board as creative producer. The film follows an ornithologist who travels to a remote mountain in search of a mythical bird, while also seeking closure over her partner’s disappearance a decade earlier.

The project recently won the Kantana Sound Studio Asian Project Award at the Bangkok International Content Market 2026. “It’s our first time working with Pam Miras as a director, and it is in a genre that is male-dominated,” said Jadaone. “We really love the way Pam handles experimentation in her films.”

Ilaya Ilaya is also developing supernatural comedy Chandra Catacutan And The Curse Of The Fuchsia Moon, set to star Eugene Domingo (Sisa). The film is directed by Tim Rone Villanueva, whose credits include Child No. 82: Anak ni Boy Kana, which caught Jadaone’s attention when it screened Cinemalaya film festival last year.

Domingo plays the eldest daughter of a manananggal – a creature from Philippine folklore that can separate its upper torso from the lower part of its body. In Villanueva’s project, the children of the creature are reunited when she suffers a stroke mid-air and fails to return to her lower half. Jadaone says Villanueva’s work showed the kind of resourcefulness and pop culture fluency she wants Ilaya Ilaya to champion.

The slate also includes Crème de la Crème, a coming-of-age whodunnit to be directed by Irene Emma Villamor. Written by Glenn Barit from a story by Natts Jadaone, the film is partly inspired by a 2006 incident at Philippine Science High School in which two male students laced a classmate’s water jug with mercury nitrate, preventing her from attending the graduation march.

Jadaone herself is returning to directing with Boldstar, a dark comedy starring Angelica Panganiban (That Thing Called Tadhana) and produced by Bianca Balbuena (Sunshine, Filipiñana). The project won the CJ Entertainment Prize at the Asian Project Market in 2019 and was later selected for the Berlinale European Co-Production Market in 2020.

Balbuena said Boldstar emerged from the momentum of Jadaone’s 2020 film Fan Girl and a period of political anger over misogyny and the treatment of women in public life. After several delays, including Panganiban’s pregnancy, Jadaone’s work on Sunshine, and Balbuena’s leadership role at the now defunct Anima Studios, the team is now reviving the project.

“The project feels very ripe and momentous now, especially after Antoinette’s Crystal Bear win in Berlinale and sold-out local screenings of Sunshine,” said Balbuena.

Beyond film, Ilaya Ilaya is expanding into television, with Jadaone showrunning an as-yet-untitled romcom series for Netflix Philippines. Plot and casting details remain under wraps, but the project is co-written with Fatrick Tabada (Flower Girl), marking Jadaone’s return to the genre that helped establish her as a local favorite nearly a decade after Love You To The Stars And Back. Jadaone previously worked with Netflix on Replacing Chef Chico.

“We’re thrilled to partner again with Antoinette Jadaone, whose creative vision and signature ‘kilig’ storytelling have resonated with Filipino audiences everywhere,” said Vitto Lazatin, Director of Content at Netflix Philippines.

Rounding out the slate is an immersive stage adaptation of Sunshine, to be directed by Mikko Angeles (Bar Boys: The Musical) and written by Mika Regis (Unica Hijas), with Racal returning to the role in her stage debut.

The project is envisioned as a choose-your-own-adventure experience that places audiences inside Sunshine’s world, expanding the film’s questions around agency, complicity, and choice beyond the screen.

“When you’re watching a film, you’re there to just watch Sunshine make decisions,” said Jadaone. “But what if Sunshine’s story was something you could hold and influence as an audience member?”

Commenting on the slate overall, Jadaone said: “Before we were filmmakers, we were lovers of Philippine cinema. We want to be more intentional now about telling stories and working with people who demonstrate a genuine love for Philippine cinema.”

De Guzman added: “What I’m most looking forward to is being able to tell stories that we really believe in. Hopefully, through Ilaya Ilaya and the stories we make together, we can get more Filipinos to appreciate and fall in love with Philippine cinema.”

What can’t Julianne Moore do?

The U.S. actress accepted Zurich Film Festival‘s lifetime achievement honor, the Golden Icon Award, in perfect German on Friday night.

She was joined at the ceremony by Jesse Eisenberg, who directs her in his latest feature The Debut, a musical-comedy co-starring Paul Giamatti, which is screening at the 22nd edition in Switzerland this week.

Moore called upon her own childhood growing up in Europe while making her acceptance speech. “Thank you for this wonderful honor,” said a translated version of her words. “I know that I am in Switzerland right now, but as a teenager, I lived in Germany. And my teacher there told me that I could become an actress. Had I not moved to Europe with my parents, I would not have had this wonderful life. And I wouldn’t be here with you tonight to speak my bad German to you.”

On the carpet ahead of the presentation, the Oscar-winning actress beamed and said she was feeling “pretty good” about the prospect of receiving the prestigious Golden Icon. “And it’s really wonderful to be here with Jesse Eisenberg, who’s such a tremendous talent and has been an unbelievably wonderful creative partner,” she added. “He’s such a genius, so I’m just happy to be sharing this experience with him, and to be here with our movie. Every day was phenomenal. It really was. There’s actually a shot of me that Jesse said was so, so funny because I was making so many dumb faces. But I said, ‘That was just my dumb face!’ I was enjoying it so much.”

Eisenberg’s third directorial feature follows Mona Friedman (Moore), who is cast in a bit part at a small community theater and transforms from a shy, unassuming housewife into a zealous method actor willing to do anything to protect the artistic integrity of her marginal role — even if it means waging war against the show’s domineering director (Giamatti).

The filmmaker-actor-writer told reporters on the Zurich carpet on Friday: “Mona is me. When I was seven years old in New Jersey in 1990, I was a sad little kid, and then I joined a community theater and I found a home.” On the brilliance of Moore, who starred in Eisenberg’s directorial debut When You Finish Saving the World (2022), he said: “When I started writing it, it was only her, and if she did not want to do it, the movie would have not been made. There’s no one else on the planet, alive or dead or yet to be born, who could play [the role] as good as she [does].”

Among Moore’s best-known performances are Still Alice, for which she won the Academy Award, as well as The Hours and The Kids Are All Right. Recent credits include Apple TV’s Echo Valley, Pedro Almodóvar’s The Room Next Door and Netflix limited series Sirens. Next year, she will return to the stage to star in the title role of the Off-Broadway play Faydra.

Also on Friday night in Zurich, In Bruges and The Banshees of Inisherin filmmaker Martin McDonagh was given the fest’s A Tribute To… Award. The honor was in celebration of his most recent film, Wild Horse Nine, which is currently making its way around the festival circuit and already generating Oscar buzz, particularly for lead actor John Malkovich.

Set shortly before the 1973 military coup in Chile, Wild Horse Nine stars Malkovich and Sam Rockwell as Chris and Lee, longtime CIA partners stationed in Santiago who are dispatched to Easter Island by their bureau chief, MJ (Buscemi) to assist in the U.S.’s covert campaign to undermine the democratically elected Chilean government. Against the surreal backdrop of the island’s monumental Moai statues, the pair begin reckoning with their murky shared past.

“I love coming to Zurich, and it’s a tremendous honor,” said the British-Irish creative on the carpet ahead of his ceremony. “I’m excited. I know it’s a great, very cine-literate audience, so I hope they’ll like [Wild Horse Nine] as much as the other ones.”

He said about travelling to Easter Island: “I visited maybe 15 years ago, and was just struck by the beauty of the place, [and] also the mystery of the Moai heads, and I thought it could be almost a character in a film, and it’s turned out to be that way. I’d worked with Sam Rockwell obviously a bunch of times before, so that’s always a joy. But John Malkovich was new to me, and he’s just perfect for the part. He’s funny and he’s dangerous. And Steve Buscemi and Parker Posey were fantastic too.”

These aren’t the only awards Zurich is dishing out. Tom Hiddleston received the Golden Eye on Thursday night as the fest opened with his Everest drama, Tenzing, and John Turturro will also be given the same honor for his starring role in this year’s The Only Living Pickpocket in New York.

The 22nd Zurich Film Festival runs Sept. 24-Oct. 4.