EXCLUSIVE: AI firm Utopai Studios will co-produce and invest in Half Moon, a feature film from South Korean filmmaker Hyo-joo Yang.
Half Moon will be Yang’s debut feature. She is best known for the short Broken Night, which won the Silver Bear at Berlin in 2010.
Half Moon will be co-produced by Germany’s In Good Company and Korea’s Paper Barn Studios, alongside Utopai Studios. Principal photography on the project is scheduled to begin in Germany in August. The production team has said PAI, Utopai Studios’ AI system, will be used to “support select visual elements in the film.”
Written and directed by Yang, the film follows Yeri and Ah-Jin, a niece and aunt, who strangers to each other, as they spend a fractured summer together on a remote North Sea island.
The official synopsis continues: “Yeri is isolated at school and emotionally neglected at home. Ah-Jin is living in self-imposed exile, working as a caregiver while carrying the physical and psychological wounds of her past. Over the course of the summer, they learn to understand and respect each other, and eventually accept who they are. The film explores loneliness, family trauma, belonging, and emotional repair through the relationship between a young girl and the aunt she barely knows.”
The cast includes Rina Kim, Elisa Hofmann, and Ana Kim. Cinematography is by Alexandra Medianikova, whose credits include the German Film Prize-winning Rå and the documentary Beyond the White, for which she was nominated for the German Cinematography Award.
“Half Moon is a story about the pain we carry from childhood, the people who unexpectedly teach us how to survive, and the small vows we make to keep going,” Yang said in a statement. “I wanted to tell a story that begins with alienation, but gradually opens toward compassion and the possibility of light, even in the darkest moments.”
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