The National Academy of Arts of Korea will hold its 2026 film festival at Seoul Cinema Center in Seoul on 5 and 6 November, under the theme of how cinema can survive the age of AI.
“The film festival will be a meaningful opportunity to find a wise course for Korean cinema amid the rough waves of artificial intelligence”
An official of the National Academy of Arts of Korea, in the festival announcement · korean-vibe.com ↗
The premiere is Confirmation, a short film in which an AI studied veteran director Im Kwon-taek's work and took on his style, including his uncut long take. It follows a son who cannot visit his father in a COVID-era nursing home.
Reports differ on how much the AI did: one says it directed the film, another that it finished a screenplay and made a single sequence.
About Im Kwon-taek
Im Kwon-taek is a South Korean film director, born on 8 December 1934 in Jangseong and raised in Gwangju, who has worked in film since 1962. By spring 2015 he had directed 102 films, and he is credited with bringing international attention to Korean cinema.
His pansori film Sopyonje (1993) became the first domestic film to draw over a million viewers in Seoul alone. He won Korea's first Best Director award at the Cannes Film Festival for Chihwaseon in 2002, and received an Honorary Golden Bear at the Berlin Film Festival in 2005.
The programme also includes AI-altered scenes from Bae Chang-ho's The Young Man and Chung Ji-young's My Name Is, eight AI shorts, and a forum on originality.
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