Motion & Video
UNHCR’s World Cup film: footballers shown as children, made with an AI pipeline
Runway says a production team portrayed eleven displaced-background footballers as children without a shoot, then finished the film on 16mm.
Done withRRunway
Reported by Runway
WHAT THEY DID
ground6 and director upperfast gathered old photos and web archives to match each player’s childhood likeness, built custom tools linking language and diffusion models, ran all video generation in Runway with about six people including two AI artists, then transferred the film to 16mm and scanned it back for grain.
HOW IT WENT
Runway reports 1.2 million organic views in the first 24 hours, a screening at the UN General Assembly and permanent display at the UN in New York.
WORTH KNOWING
Recreating real people’s likenesses needs their consent; the story says one or two players had no childhood photos and doesn’t say how that was handled. No budget or timeline is given.
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Source: Runway · UndatedOpen as a page
About this source
Type: Vendor customer story · Company claim
- Runway Customers | How upperfast Brought UNHCR's FIFA World Cup Film to Life With Runway
Runway · Runway · Publication date not stated · Checked Oct 20, 2026
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Access: Page text was read during research.
Source check: Spot-checked by the 4TC build team on Oct 20, 2026. Re-read on 2026-10-20 for the second research pass. Nobody at 4TC has tested this.
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Added to 4TC Oct 20, 2026 · Last checked Oct 20, 2026
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