Sepia Creativa, María Cárdenas and Victoria Deleyto.
Spain, the United States, Spain. Three works selected for their capacity to integrate artificial intelligence at the service of a narrative with purpose. Inside the inaugural edition of the Global Challenge Awards.
Every first edition of an international movement carries a moment in which the project stops being an idea and becomes reality. For the Global Boost Awards, that moment arrives with the official publication of the three finalist brands of the Global Challenge Awards 2026 — the international challenge directed at creators and brands who are using artificial intelligence to build powerful narratives with genuine human purpose.
The list, deliberately short and editorially curated, reads as follows: Sepia Creativa, María Cárdenas and Victoria Deleyto.
Three names. Two countries. Three cinematic works, all created with artificial intelligence. And one shared yardstick: the capacity to integrate AI not as a technical novelty, but as an instrument in the service of a real human story.
A Curated Selection, Not an Open Call
It is worth beginning with something important. The Global Challenge Awards is not a mass open call, nor a popular award. It is a curated selection, articulated by the editorial committee of the movement on the basis of the five official criteria that govern the entire AI Boost Experience: narrative strength, strategic use of AI, coherent integration of brand and message, aesthetic quality, and connection to a genuine human purpose.
The three finalists arriving at this first edition do so, therefore, after a rigorous editorial process that has prioritised quality and coherence over volume. The organisation has been explicit on this point: it prefers a short and demanding list to a long and diluted one. Three brands. Three works. One single overall winner, to be revealed during the Private Gala on May 16th, within the framework of the Marché du Film.
Finalist 01 · Sepia Creativa (Spain)
The first finalist arrives from Spain, and it does so as a creative duo. Sepia Creativa — the project signed jointly by Marc López and Marcos Cortecero — reaches the final with a work the editorial committee has described as “a highly cinematic piece with a compelling narrative that demonstrates an advanced use of artificial intelligence in the creative process.”
That Sepia Creativa is the work of two authors, not one, is a relevant editorial detail. Cinema, like any other narrative discipline, is rarely the result of a single mind: it is the result of a precise dialogue between visions that complement and challenge one another. López and Cortecero embody, in this final, that collaborative tradition that contemporary cinema risked forgetting amidst the cult of the single name.
What distinguishes the work signed by the duo, according to the committee’s reading, is the way artificial intelligence appears integrated naturally into the creative process — without ostentation, in the service of a story that positions the brand with clear authority. It is precisely the dynamic the Global Challenge Awards seeks to recognise: AI as a cinematic instrument, not as an advertising hook. The combined sensibility of López and Cortecero understands that distinction, and translates it into images that hold their ground on their own.
Spain thus signs its first presence among the finalists of the movement. It will not, predictably, be the last.
Finalist 02 · María Cárdenas (USA)
The second finalist arrives from the United States. María Cárdenas signs a piece described by the committee as “visually striking, combining powerful AI effects with a deeply emotional narrative.” It is a work that, according to the editorial reading, translates brand leadership into identity — one of the most difficult operations to achieve in the contemporary language of brand cinema.
The piece exemplifies a tendency the movement is following closely: the use of AI as an emotional amplifier rather than as a narrative substitute. Where others use artificial intelligence to impress, this work uses it to move. That difference, subtle on paper, is decisive on screen.
The presence of an American work among the finalists confirms, moreover, the movement’s truly international vocation from its very first edition. The bridge between Cannes and Hollywood — articulated by the editorial ecosystem of La Croisette — finds here its first concrete translation.
Finalist 03 · Victoria Deleyto (Spain)
The third finalist returns to Spain. Victoria Deleyto completes the trio with a work described as “a bold and concept-driven piece built around transformation,” in which AI “enhances a striking symbolic moment into a clear and impactful statement.”
If the other two works explore, respectively, authority and emotion, Deleyto’s work moves into a third territory: transformation as a narrative concept. It is a more daring, more symbolic approach — and, according to the committee’s early readings, one of the most representative pieces of where contemporary brand cinema is heading.
That two of the three finalists come from Spain, in a first international edition, is a signal the movement does not hide. Contemporary Spanish creative cinema is producing voices that deserve to be looked at carefully beyond their borders. The Global Boost Awards have decided to look at them.
One Single Winner, Announced at the Private Gala
Unlike other ceremonies that distribute recognitions across multiple categories, the Global Challenge Awards bets on a single winner. The decision is not arbitrary: it reflects the movement’s conviction that excellence, in its most demanding sense, is always a singular act. There will be one work which, read by the committee under the five official criteria, synthesises better than any other the convergence of cinema, artificial intelligence and purpose.
The winner’s name will be revealed during the Private Gala on May 16th, 2026, within the framework of the Marché du Film at the Cannes Film Festival. The evening, strictly by invitation only, will gather the three finalists, the editorial committee, the leaders recognised by the Global Recognition, and a carefully selected group of international figures from the worlds of cinema, brands and artificial intelligence.
It will be, in the words of the organisation itself, “the night that reveals everything.”
What the Three Finalists Have Already Achieved
Regardless of the name announced from the stage on May 16th, the three brands arriving at this final have already accomplished something significant: they have demonstrated, through their work, that another way of using artificial intelligence in brand cinema is possible. A more careful one. A more narrative one. A more cinematic one. One that understands AI as an instrument in the service of a human vision, not as a substitute for it.
That this first edition has only three finalists is not a limitation. It is an editorial statement. The AI Boost Experience prefers to recognise little and well, rather than much and halfway. And the names published today — Marc López and Marcos Cortecero for Sepia Creativa; María Cárdenas; and Victoria Deleyto — are, in La Croisette’s editorial reading, the first four official names of the new era of influence.
The rest will be known on May 16th.
— The Editors
La Croisette · May 15, 2026
The full coverage of the AI Boost Experience continues on these pages, with the chronicle of the Private Gala on May 16th.