Raphael: Korea's First AI Theatrical Feature at Cannes

Korean director Eekjun Yang told a Cannes Marché du Film panel on May 20 that his upcoming feature Raphael was produced by a team of seven, against a conventional Korean theatrical budget of $700,000 to $2 million for a comparable project. The 80 minute film, scheduled for a September release in Korea, anchors MBC C&I AI Content Lab's most ambitious slate to date.

Yang sat on a Palais des Festivals main stage panel titled "From Creative Possibility to Production Reality: Kling AI in Cinematic Workflows", alongside Chinese animator Wei Li and U.S. director Jon Erwin. The session ran across May 18 to 20 and was organized by Kling AI parent Kuaishou.

The Access Argument

Yang's core message at Cannes was that AI is not a shortcut. "If we'd filmed in real life, it would have required 150 to 300 people and a budget of up to $2M. But we had a team of just seven and much lower cost", he told Deadline. He pushed back on the cost framing in Screen Daily: "Probably the biggest misconception is the idea that we're using AI just because we want to make films cheaper and faster".

For a director without prior feature credits, Yang said AI was a prerequisite rather than a creative choice. Raphael is his first theatrical feature, following the team's win at the 2024 Korea International AI Film Festival with the short Mateo.

From Festival Short to Theatrical Plan

Raphael is directed by Yang Eekjun, Jung Juwon and Moon Shinwoo, the same trio behind Mateo. The new film follows an elite war android modeled after the youthful image of an aging dictator. While commanding forces in a refugee district, the android encounters a Catholic priest and begins a journey toward faith and redemption.

The film is produced by Mateo AI Studio with MBC C&I AI Content Lab. MBC C&I positioned Raphael at March's Hong Kong FilMart as one of the world's first entirely AI generated feature films, before bringing the project to Cannes as Kling AI's flagship case study two months later.

Why 4K Mattered

Yang stressed at Cannes that Kling AI's native 4K output was the technical threshold that made theatrical release viable. The team's earlier tool stack also included Midjourney, Stable Diffusion, and Runway Gen3 during development, per a March 16 Variety exclusive. The Cannes panel positioned Kling AI as the current production reality without claiming it was the only tool used.

Kling AI also confirmed its Filmmaker Initiative at the same panel. The program offers cash incentives and compute resources to AI productions targeting theatrical and streaming distribution standards, head of operations Yushen Zeng said. Kling AI's tools are available in the AI FILMS Studio video workspace.

Inside the Asian AI Cinema Wave

Raphael sits within a growing slate of Asian AI features pursuing theatrical or streaming release. The project follows I'm Popo, another Korean AI theatrical title that pushed for cinema distribution earlier in 2026, and shared the Cannes panel stage with Wei Li's Chinese ink painting epic Born of the Tide. Kling AI made the broader market case at the same panel through its Filmmaker Initiative announcement and Minibots partnership, part of a Cannes 2026 shift across multiple AI productions. Directors targeting the production techniques shown at Cannes can study the underlying tools in our Kling 3 motion control tutorial.

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Sources

• Deadline
• Variety
• Screen Daily
• The Manila Times
• Asian Movie Pulse
• GlobeNewswire