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Poster of ‘The Messenger’ (Provided by HSAD).

Two Korean AI films made successive waves on the international stage in the first half of 2026. Messenger, a sci-fi short produced by Park Dong-hwa, an AI director at Korean advertising agency HSAD, won Best AI Film at five global festivals including competitions held in New York, Cannes, and Los Angeles. Man in Hanbok, a feature-length alternate history fantasy directed by novelist-turned-filmmaker Lee Sang-hoon, followed a path from domestic and international AI festival recognition to a distribution deal at Hong Kong FilMart and a theatrical release in Korea in May. Both films employed generative AI across every stage of production, from development and cinematography through editing and music.

Messenger is an eight-minute, five-second SF thriller short. The film follows scientist Eden Reed, who receives a warning message from the year 2030 and finds himself at a crossroads when he learns that the AI-based reactor he has developed will bring catastrophe. The film was produced over approximately two months, with generative AI used across every stage — from planning and production through editing, music, and post-production. A key technique developed for the film was "cinematic prompt engineering," which incorporates real-world cinematographic parameters — camera model, lens specification, and lighting design — directly into the AI prompts, raising the visual quality of the finished work. The film went on to win Best AI Film at five international festivals: the New York Film Awards, the World Film Festival in Cannes, the Los Angeles Film Awards, the Filmmakers Connect Awards, and Kaicon 2026. It was also selected as an official entry for the AI Film Awards in Cannes 2026.

Man in Hanbok is a feature film with a running time of 67 minutes. The story takes its premise from a speculative hypothesis: that the unidentified East Asian figure in a drawing by the Flemish master Rubens was in fact Jang Yeong-sil, the Joseon-era scientist and inventor. The narrative imagines what happened after Jang's disappearance from historical record following the so-called "palanquin incident" of 1442. In the film, Jang escapes to Europe with the assistance of King Sejong and the explorer Zheng He, eventually arriving in Renaissance Florence, where he meets a young Leonardo da Vinci and the two collaborate on the bicha — a legendary flying machine. Generative AI was used throughout the production pipeline, from screenplay development to visual realization, reconstructing both a fifteenth-century Joseon royal court and the streets of Renaissance Italy entirely through AI-generated imagery. The film received the Grand Prize at the 2nd Korea AI Film Festival was invited to the Busan International AI Film Festival (BIAIF) and the World AI Film Festival (WAIFF), secured a distribution deal at Hong Kong FilMart, and opened in Korean cinemas on May 21, 2026.

What the creators of both films share is a command of narrative design. Park Dong-hwa developed his directing sensibility through major advertising campaigns, honing the ability to structure emotion and convey meaning through visual language within a compressed running time. Lee Sang-hoon came to the project as the author of the original novel, already in command of the precise narrative architecture that the story required. In both cases, AI provided a visual world that would previously have been impossible to realize — it expanded the possibilities of the story without replacing the story itself. This is the basis on which both films have been received not merely as technical experiments but as works with genuine narrative substance.

For the achievements of these two films to translate into a sustainable industry, two challenges remain. The first is distribution: building a pathway from AI film festival recognition and nominations to theatrical and platform release. The second is the balance between technical and narrative achievement. The visual power that AI enables only carries meaning when it serves a persuasive story — and maintaining that relationship between craft and content is identified as the central task facing Korean AI cinema as it moves into its next phase.

Sources

• Variety, "'Man in Hanbok,' 'I'm Popo' Ink Korean Distribution Pacts (EXCLUSIVE)," 2026.05.17

• CinePlay, "[AI Film Issue] 'Is That a Joseon Figure in Rubens' Painting?' AI Film Man in Hanbok to Open in May," 2026.03.31

• Cine21, "[Review] A Gauge for the Present and Future of Generative AI Cinema: Man in Hanbok," 2026.05.20

• BrandBrief, "HSAD AI Director Park Dong-hwa Wins Top Prize at Five Global Festivals including New York Film Awards 2026 with AI Film Messenger," 2025.05.19

• Kookmin Ilbo, "HSAD's AI Film Messenger Wins Top Prize at Five Global Festivals," 2026.05.20