Vincent Soberano’s AI-forward film ‘Secret Apartment’ wins Bali film fest

Filipino film director Vincent Soberano won both the inaugural Bold Vision Award and the Gold Award for Best AI Major Motion Picture at the Bali International AI Film Festival (BIAIFF) Season 5 for his project “Secret Apartment,” beating out 1,000 entries from various countries.

Best known for his work in the action genre, Soberano took a significant step forward with “Secret Apartment,” his first foray into non-action storytelling and full-length generative AI filmmaking.

Set against the backdrop of modern Taipei, “Secret Apartment” connects the opulent penthouses of Taiwan’s billionaire elite to the city’s raw, shadowy underbelly.

Using generative AI to create a dangerously provocative and erotic psychological drama about obsession, power, and the hidden costs of desire, Soberano’s “Secret Apartment” chronicles the psychological undoing of a young student who embarks on an all-consuming, illicit affair with a commanding real estate tycoon — her older cousin’s fiancé.

Starring Azela Lee and Michael Wu, “Secret Apartment” delves into territory that is rarely explored in AI cinema: adult desire, intimacy, social hierarchy, secrecy, and the consequences of crossing boundaries.

With nearly three years of experience as an AI video creator, Soberano had previously used AI technology to create storyboards, previsualization videos, pitch decks, sample clips, and VFX elements for post-production.

“I kind of stumbled into creating a full-length film while experimenting with Higgsfield’s Cinema Studio,” Soberano explained. “I gave it a simple prompt for a small scene with a short backstory between two unlikely lovers, and it returned several video clips that would later serve as inspiration for the film.”

Using the Higgsfield platform and AI models such as Seedance2.0, Nano Banana Pro, and Cinema Studio 4, as well as CapCut for AI-enhanced editing and Songer for musical scoring, Soberano wrote, directed, generated, edited, and composed the entire 60-minute film in less than three months. “I created it in episodic chunks, initially as a miniseries,” he said. “In the end, it looked like a one-hour pilot episode and a full-length feature film.”

According to Soberano, creating an AI feature-length erotic romance movie is already a technological challenge. Soberano single-handedly solved the problems and challenges that had stopped other AI filmmakers, down to the smallest details such as intricate tattoos, by developing his own unique workflow and toolsets, including software apps he’d built to support the project.

Produced by Scene 8 Studios / Seq 8 Studios Corp., “Secret Apartment” will soon be available on a variety of AI film platforms, including a special version for vertical dramas.

Soberano is currently working on his next project, which will employ “hybrid filmmaking,” with real human actors playing character roles and AI elements filling the rest. His company, Scene 8 Studio, is creating a library of AI elements for hybrid filmmaking, with the intention of licensing the intellectual property to other film producers and studios.