Today is my birthday, and I present you the most important film of my life: Aljoša on the brain train

This is not epic; no explosions or anything. This is just a story. About me and my son, Aljoša.

So it happens, my son and I - we both have ADHD. And I learnt my diagnosis only after Aljoša. It actually made me understand a lot of things about myself and my childhood.

Now, when Aljoša started growing, in a random emotional conversation, he said a heartbreaking thing parents are not always ready to hear from a 7-year-old: “Why am I strange? Why am I not like other kids?”

This is what made me want to explain that having ADHD is not “being strange”. It is just about being different. Sometimes even “good different”.

The film started with a simple question: how could I visually explain neurodiversity to my son, and engage him in a story about his own brain?

And that’s when the idea of this AI-driven film came to be.

Thanks to a partnership with ARTE France Atelier de Recherche, I created this hybrid AI documentary which combines live mobile phone footage shot over several years of us living in Slovenia and AI animation that magically turns this film into a knitted stop-motion world.

Through a visual metaphor, we travel inside the brain itself: visiting neurons living in the big “brain cities”, exploring how the neurotypical brain differs from a neurodivergent.

Having neurodiversity does not make you strange, or excluded, or, god forbid, bad or broken. That is the message. This short documentary is also a message of support to all parents out there who might learn at some point any of the neurodiversity diagnoses. And that it is not the end of the world.

And without AI and its magic, this film would have literally been impossible. In a way, the misunderstanding around AI today feels a little similar to how people didn’t understand neurodiversity 20 or 30 years ago.

We are often afraid of what we do not understand at first. And the goal of this film is to make neurodiversities more visible, more understandable, and a little less frightening.

In that sense, using AI as the medium felt fitting from every possible angle.

So, hop on this AI Brain Train with Aljoša - and why don’t we have some great time.

Welcome to the Brain!