A HYBRID AI FILM BY GABRIELE CIAMPI
THE RITUAL CODE
Episode I · The Vatican Protocol
A SPIRITUAL THRILLER IN THREE EPISODES
PREMIERES NOVEMBER 19 ON YOUTUBE
WATCH NOWI
The music came first.
Before a single frame existed, the score was written by hand, at the piano.
As a classically trained composer, Gabriele Ciampi starts from a theme, and so does this film. He wrote the main theme first. Everything else grew out of it: the pace of each scene, the length of a silence, the moment a face turns to the light.
The images were then generated to fit the music, never the other way round.
In The Ritual Code, silence is the main instrument. When the music comes in, it is a solo cello. The episode closes on an original song.
The Ritual Code, main theme
Solo cello: Livia De Romanis · 1 min excerpt
Back to the Light
Written by Gabriele Ciampi · performed by SARA, an AI singer · 1 min excerpt
Mastered at Abbey Road Studios.
II
The film
The Vatican built an AI to understand the soul. Now it needs a body.
The Ritual Code is a spiritual thriller in three episodes: a Vatican mystery in which every witness is lying to protect someone else, and possession is the loss of one’s own body.
EPISODE I · THE VATICAN PROTOCOL
On the anniversary of a failed exorcism, a relic vanishes from the Vatican's restricted archive. A priest takes the blame, a cardinal refuses to listen, and an archivist starts asking the wrong questions. By nightfall, something old has found its way home, and something new is about to wake.
TEASER · 50 SECONDS
- IThe Vatican ProtocolNOVEMBER 19, 2026 · 27 MIN · ON YOUTUBE
- IITitle to be announcedDECEMBER 2026
- IIITitle to be announcedJANUARY 2027
III
The image is AI. The person is real.
These are the Hybrid AI Actors of The Ritual Code.
They are not synthetic. Each one is a real person, a volunteer who gave their face by written consent and is credited by name. In Episode I, Gabriele performed the roles and the actors recorded some of their own lines. From Episode II, they perform their characters themselves.
HYBRID AI ACTOR
CHARACTERVanessa Formichetti
as Anna Santangelo
ROME
HYBRID AI ACTOR
CHARACTERAnthony John Endieveri
as Cardinal Carlo Vescari
HOUSTON
HYBRID AI ACTOR
CHARACTERAdrian Nishino
as Father Adriano
LOS ANGELES
HYBRID AI ACTOR
CHARACTERLuca Di Medio
as Father Moretti
ATLANTA
HYBRID AI ACTOR
CHARACTERGiulia Verna
as Lara Vella
ROME
HYBRID AI ACTOR
CHARACTERJennifer Yoo
as Jennifer
LOS ANGELES
IV
Costume and set
Every costume and every room began as a reference chosen by hand.
Consistency is the hardest thing to get from AI. Left alone, a coat changes its buttons between two shots and a room moves its window. So in The Ritual Code a person supervised every reference and every detail: Daniela Bonini, who is in charge of costume and set design.
She found each piece first: a coat, a pair of earrings, a nightdress, a room. Her references guided the images, so each character wears the same clothes, and each place looks the same, from the first shot to the last. The sketches below were drawn from them.
COSTUME STYLING · D. BONINI
SKETCH
ON SCREENAnna's coat
A long grey tweed coat, double-breasted and fitted at the waist. Anna wears it in the relic shop.
SKETCH
ON SCREENAnna's earrings
Gold openwork drops with a fringe of pearls. They stay with her from the archives to the relic shop.
SKETCH
ON SCREENLara's nightdress
A pale grey slip with a lace edge, under a soft cardigan, for the room in Lampedusa in 1980.
SKETCH
ON SCREENAnna's shoes
Brown suede T-straps with a pewter trim and a low heel.
Costumes and sets by Daniela Bonini, styled from real-world pieces she selected and adapted for each character.
SET · D. BONINI
ON SCREENThe room in Lampedusa
A whitewashed room with a vaulted alcove: an iron bed, blue shutters, a strip of painted tiles and a single oil lamp. The story begins here, in 1980.
Daniela is also on screen, as the Hybrid AI Actor credited for Dr. Nola, a character built with her consent, starting, as always, from a real person.