AI Recreates the Past in New Venice Documentary About Diesel Founder Renzo Rosso
New Venice documentary Be Brave uses AI to recreate unseen moments from Diesel founder Renzo Rosso’s life, opening up a new way of telling real stories.
A new documentary about Diesel founder Renzo Rosso is using artificial intelligence to bring unseen parts of his life to the screen, giving audiences a glimpse of moments that were never originally filmed.
Be Brave has premiered at the Venice Film Festival and follows Rosso’s rise from ambitious entrepreneur to one of the most recognisable names in global fashion. The film combines archive footage, interviews and AI-generated material to build a visual account of his life and career.
The technology is not being used as a gimmick. Instead, the filmmakers use AI to represent periods and memories where no original footage exists, helping the documentary move beyond the limits of traditional archive material.
Rosso is best known as the founder of Diesel and the wider OTB Group, which grew into a major international fashion business. The film traces his journey through the worlds of design, advertising and business, while also looking at the creative approach that helped make Diesel such a distinctive brand.
Director Francesco Carrozzini has explained that artificial intelligence was chosen because it suited Rosso’s reputation for challenging convention and doing things differently. The idea was to use the technology as part of the storytelling itself, rather than simply making a conventional documentary with a few AI effects added afterwards.
That makes Be Brave particularly interesting at a time when filmmakers are still working out what artificial intelligence can realistically add to film and television. Here, the technology is being used to fill visual gaps in a real person’s story and create sequences that could not have been captured at the time.
It also raises a much bigger question for the future of documentaries. If AI can convincingly recreate events, memories and places that were never filmed, audiences may increasingly see real-life stories told with a mixture of genuine archive and newly generated footage.
There is currently no confirmed UK release date for Be Brave. Following its world premiere at the Venice Film Festival, international sales are being handled by OUR FILMS, part of Mediawan
