"AI, Folklore, and Mischief": Denis Moretti on His Animated Series How the Cunning Fox Shared the Harvest with the Hares

When filmmaker and screenwriter Denis Moretti describes his latest project, his eyes light up with a mix of irony and awe - as if he's still not entirely sure whether he directed it or it directed him.
The project, titled How the Cunning Fox Shared the Harvest with the Hares (Как Хитрый Лис с Зайцами урожай делил), is being called the first AI-assisted animated series in Eastern Europe, a surreal and poetic blend of folklore, satire, and modern technology.

The origin of the idea
It started with an old Russian fairy tale about a fox tricking the hares out of their crops. But I wanted to explore it differently - not as a children's story, but as a fable about power, greed, and survival. And I thought: what happens if this old folklore is reimagined through the lens of artificial intelligence?
Moretti fed a neural network with hundreds of sources: folk tales, Soviet cartoons, news reports about agriculture, and even fragments of his own scripts. The AI produced strange, poetic nonsense - riddles, broken morals, unexpected metaphors.
It was like folklore reborn through machine consciousness. Sometimes it wrote something profound, other times completely absurd. My job was to guide it - like a folklorist arguing with a robot poet.

The process of creation
The animation was generated through a hybrid workflow: the AI suggested visual compositions, color palettes, and dialogues, while the creative team re-animated, edited, and gave rhythm to the narrative.
We didn't use AI to replace artists - we used it to provoke them. The machine would propose something bizarre, and the animators would react emotionally, correcting it or exaggerating it. It became a call-and-response between logic and intuition.
The result is a visually rich, darkly humorous world - a mix of painterly animation, glitch aesthetics, and folk surrealism. The Fox is sly not just in behavior, but in design: his movements flicker between organic and algorithmic, his expressions morph as if the AI itself can't decide what emotion he's having.

Themes and tone
It's a horror-comedy at heart. The Fox isn't just a trickster - he's a metaphor for the system, for anyone who manipulates language to control others.
The hares are naïve, but kind; they represent community, nature, something human that the Fox keeps trying to digitize.
Every episode explores a different moral dilemma - ownership, labor, hunger, empathy - but in a tone that swings between laughter and unease. Viewers never know if they're watching a satire or a prophecy.

AI as co-author
I credit the AI as a "co-writer." It forced me to see my own biases and habits. It doesn't understand irony, but it creates it accidentally - and that's terrifyingly beautiful.
Sometimes it would write a perfect line without knowing why, and that made me rethink what authorship even means.
For Moretti, the series isn't just an experiment in technology - it's a philosophical statement.
We live in an age where folklore is being rewritten by algorithms. I just decided to show it literally - what happens when the trickster from old tales meets the trickster in your code.

Reception and future
The first season, composed of short episodes blending animation and generated dialogue, has already gained attention on the festival circuit for its originality and unsettling humor. The project also received recognition at two international festivals for Best Innovation in Animation and Experimental Storytelling.
I think it worked because it wasn't trying to look perfect. It looked haunted. Like something between a fairy tale and a machine dream. That's where new mythology begins - between code and chaos.

Denis Moretti is a filmmaker and screenwriter exploring the intersection of horror, comedy, and artificial intelligence. His works blur the line between human storytelling and machine imagination.

Creative Tone Production Studio by Denmor
6004, Leonidze str, Batumi, Georgia
seth.leo.moretti@gmail.com

Creative Tone Production Studio by Denmor

The enterprise founded by Denis Moretti is a multidisciplinary creative studio operating at the intersection of cinema, technology, and digital storytelling. Its core mission is to develop and produce innovative audiovisual projects - films, series, and branded content - that merge traditional storytelling with emerging technologies such as artificial intelligence, generative animation, and virtual production.
The studio's long-term vision is to become a European hub for experimental narrative formats: hybrid projects that blend cinema, animation, gaming aesthetics, and journalism. Its foundation lies in Denis Moretti's professional expertise as a film director, screenwriter, and content creator with an international background across Europe.

The enterprise is built on three artistic and ethical pillars:
Human stories in a technological age - exploring how identity, creativity, and emotion evolve in a world mediated by algorithms and screens.
Blending art and innovation - using AI and digital tools not to replace the artist, but to amplify imagination and democratize access to production.
Cross-cultural collaboration - building bridges between Eastern European storytelling traditions and Western cinematic craftsmanship, creating works that speak a universal language through diverse voices.

This release was published on openPR.