I'm Popo

I'm Popo is a 64-minute South Korean sci-fi thriller directed and written by Kim Il-dong and released by Newone Cinema (also given as Cinema Newone and Cinema New One in coverage). It opened in Korean theaters on 21 May 2026 after a press screening at the Seoul Film Center, and its trailer is on YouTube. Its distributor bills it as the first South Korean feature with visuals generated entirely by AI.

Kim, a webtoon artist making his feature directing debut, wrote the script and ran the prompts himself. He told reporters the film took roughly two months to assemble, working largely alone, and Cineplay reports it was made without actors or crew. The pages do not name the video or image models used. Professional voice actors supplied the dialogue, but no on-screen performers were cast. Kim says he recorded the dubbing first, let the sound carry and then attached the visuals, because the images can look awkward. To stop characters morphing into one another he based their faces on people close to him. He added that earlier generators held shots to a ceiling of about five seconds, and that the film was finished roughly a year before release, before the tools improved.

Kim describes the film as a signal that the era of one-person filmmaking has arrived, and says he wanted to give people a reason to think again about how AI has entered daily life. Korea Times quotes him hoping it serves as an opportunity to reflect on the influence of AI that people now encounter every day.

Rolling Stone India reports the film won the Grand Prize at the 2024 Korea AI Content Awards, screened at festivals in Spain and Russia and appeared at the 2025 Busan International Film Festival. Let's Data Science, citing Variety, names the Spanish and Russian festivals as Girona Film Festival and the Amur Autumn International Film Festival. The film's YouTube upload had 4,079 views when read on 8 October 2026.

Reception was cool. The Korea Herald review judged that the film makes a stronger case for the headline than for the medium, citing plastic-looking faces, shifting features, rapid cuts and a short film's worth of story stretched over 64 minutes. Korea Times says the project met considerable concern over whether AI-made films can count as creative works, while Rolling Stone India notes viewers found the visuals robotic and supporters see it lowering barriers for independent filmmaking. Cineplay quotes critic Jeon Chan-il calling it an important reference point for the development of AI films around the world, including in Korea.

Korea Times and the Herald place it among a wave of Korean AI-assisted releases, including Kang Yun-sung's Run to the West and CJ ENM's The House, but describe I'm Popo as the first Korean theatrical feature built end to end on generative AI, a status the Herald notes it would not hold alone for long, since Man in Hanbok opened the same day.