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A Filipino man walks through the backyard of his childhood home in rural Hawai’i, his footsteps swooshing through the grass. Birds chirp, contributing to the tropical din, as he approaches a shrine at the base of a starfruit tree. He bends to inspect a framed black-and-white photograph of a woman, her hair in a 1950s side part.  Suddenly, a gust of wind shakes the tree’s branches, knocking over the contents of the shrine. The man steps back, trips on a root, and hits his head. When he awakens, he’s in a dark, misty forest, a woman wearing a clay mask standing over him, brandishing a sword.  “Who are you who dares to sleep under the sacred tree?” she asks in Ilocano, a Hawaiian dialect of Filipino, while holding the sword at his throat. He replies that he’s lost and turns to flee. She chases, alternating between running and floating through the air. He falls again. She advances, sword held high. He throws a rock at her, shattering the clay mask and revealing half her face.  “Mom?” he asks.  This is the opening of “Murmuray,” a short film by independent filmmaker Brad Tangonan. Everything about this film felt like his previous work, from the tactile nature shots to the dreamlike desaturated highlights.  The only difference? He made it using AI.  Tangonan was one of 10 filmmakers to participate in Google Flow Sessions, a five-week cohort that gave creatives access to Google’s suite of AI tools to produce short films, including Gemini, image generator Nano Banana Pro, and film...