Director Zholdaskali uses Higgsfield AI to deliver 95-minute feature in 14 days

This production proves generative AI can sustain narrative coherence and character consistency across feature-length durations, moving the technology beyond social media marketing clips. For emerging markets like Kazakhstan, AI platforms significantly lower the barrier to global distribution by providing high-end visual effects without heavy capital investment. The massive curation ratio required—over 16,000 generates for 25 minutes of footage—demonstrates that while AI reduces costs, production is still a labor-intensive human craft. Watch the international sales performance of 'Sicko' and 'Hell Grind' as a proxy for the commercial viability of AI-accelerated independent features.

Higgsfield was co-founded by Alex Mashrabov, the former head of generative AI at Snap, along with AI researcher Yerzat Dulat. The company launched in early 2024 with $8 million in seed funding led by Menlo Ventures, building its generative video models with a 16-person team in under nine months on a cluster of 32 GPUs. Higgsfield has since evolved from its original social-media-focused Diffuse app into a broader generative media platform. According to OpenAI's own case study, Higgsfield now generates roughly 4 million videos per day using GPT-4.1, GPT-5, and Sora 2, and recently launched Cinema Studio, a horizontal workspace designed for trailers and short films where early creators are producing multi-minute videos often indistinguishable from live-action footage.

Higgsfield's Cinema Studio product directly supports the kind of feature-length workflow Zholdaskali employed for 'Hell Grind.' The platform offers scene-by-scene direction with consistent characters and cinematic shot control, capabilities that align with the 95-minute narrative coherence required for a theatrical release. This positions Higgsfield in direct competition with Runway, which unveiled Gen-3 Alpha in June 2024 with fine-grained controls over structure, style, and motion, and which operates Runway Studios as a production partner for enterprise clientele and hosts the AI Film Festival. Runway has raised over $236.5 million from investors including Google and Nvidia, giving it significantly more capital than Higgsfield's initial $8 million seed round.

The competitive landscape for AI video generation has intensified since Higgsfield's launch. OpenAI introduced Sora in February 2024, capable of generating photorealistic videos up to a minute long from text prompts, and initially gated access to red teamers and select filmmakers. OpenAI later seeded Sora access to marketing agencies and indie and Hollywood directors, with CTO Mira Murati attending the 2024 Cannes Film Festival. Zholdaskali's 14-day, $500,000 production of a 95-minute feature using Higgsfield represents a significant step beyond the short-form clips and social media marketing use cases that most of these platforms originally targeted, testing whether AI-generated video can sustain commercial theatrical distribution at feature length.