I love getting the chance to watch a foreign film. While Hollywood may be seen as the gold standard, there are so many brilliant filmmakers and performers across the globe that have made some of the best movies in recent memory.
Just over the last few years I’ve seen critically-acclaimed and award-winning foreign language movies like I’m Still Here, Anatomy of a Fall, The Zone of Interest, Perfect Days, All Quiet on the Western Front, Drive My Car, Parallel Mothers, The Worst Person in the World and, of course, the Best Picture-winner Parasite. Many of these ended up among my favorite movies of their respective years.
But foreign countries aren’t just giving us movies to watch during Oscar season, they’ve also delivered some fun, popcorn-perfect movies like Under Paris, Sisu, RRR and Godzilla Minus One (the last of which got the best of both worlds as it did well at the box office and won an Oscar).
Whether it is in the movie theater or on streaming, I always opt to watch the subtitled version of foreign language movies, mainly because the uncanny valley of voice over dubbing has always been painful to watch. I do acknowledge, however, that for many reading subtitles are a similar annoyance. Those options will often lead to people not wanting to watch foreign language movies.
Well, Watch the Skies, a sci-fi movie from Sweden that arrives in the US as a 2025 new movie on May 9, is seeking to solve both problems: creating a dubbed version of the movie that claims to make it look like the movie was shot in English. The tool to make all of this possible, artificial intelligence (AI).
AI is a buzz word in the movie industry right now (most industries in all honesty), and depending on your viewpoint, a trigger word. But Watch the Skies is looking to show what AI can do and the benefits it can bring as it is the first theatrical full-length feature film to use AI technology for immersive dubbing, also being referred to as visual dubbing or “vubbing” by the filmmakers and the company behind the technology, Flawless.
In promo materials for Watch the Skies, Flawless and the movie’s distributor XYZ Films claims that the AI technology, called TrueSync, enhances voice over dubs without replacing the human creativity at the heart of the movie. It says it achieved this by collaborating with the original filmmakers and cast for the English dub, as well as adhering to Screen Actors Guild regulations regarding voiceover jobs. In essence, they are positioning this as an AI tool for the human creatives, keeping them in control, and not an entirely AI creation.
“It’s still our movie, it’s still the actor’s performance,” said director Victor Danell, in a video feature.
“For the movie industry, this is a game changer,” added producer Albin Petterson.
There’s a scenario where Petterson is right. Imagine a world where all foreign movies use this technology. It could remove the need for subtitles, allowing moviegoers to experience a movie from Asia, from non-English speaking countries in Europe and anywhere in the world just like they would a movie made in Hollywood. It would remove the perceived barrier that many people have about watching a foreign language movie, potentially creating a truly global cinema.
But what would we potentially be losing with this AI-generated technology removing foreign language movies in their native language?
There is an argument to be made that even with the collaboration of the filmmaker and actors, the new version is not their work but that of AI. From what has been shown in behind-the-scenes clips, while the actors rerecord their lines in English, the AI-generated results are overlaid onto the original material. The actors weren’t speaking in English when the footage was shot on set, so will all of their expressions and rhythms line up?
You can check out a clip from Watch the Skies right here to get a quick glimpse and see what you think:
A more existential question, however, is should we be trying to remove foreign languages at all? Currently, subtitles are the predominant form of watching a foreign language movie on the big screen in English-speaking countries. Even on streaming, while dubbed versions are available, so are subtitled versions with the original audio. If Flawless’ vubbing technology becomes the dominant format though, will we still get the original movies in their foreign languages with subtitles? If not, what are we losing by not hearing the latest Pedro Almodovar movie in Spanish, for example?
That’s just a hypothetical. I reached out with some questions about the technology and the hopes for it to Flawless founder Scott Mann, but had not heard back before publishing. So whether they view vubbing as a replacement for subtitles or another option for moviegoers alongside subtitles is not clear at this time.
But a statement from Flawless in the Watch the Skies press materials reads:
"... the company creates the world's most advanced and artist-friendly film technology, empowering filmmakers to streamline production and multiply audience reach, thereby setting the stage for a new era of profitable, globalized film that benefits artists, studios and audiences. Flawless proprietary, best-in-class visual dubbing technology, TrueSync, named a TIME Best Invention for it's cinema-quality visual translation for films to any language, allows filmmakers and studios to produce perfectly visually translated films in any language, solving the century-old problem of imperfect dubbing and thereby dramatically increasing content's global appeal."
The technology will have its first test when Watch the Skies opens in 110 AMC movie theaters across the US on May 9.
It’s potentially good timing, as there is no major summer blockbuster movie opening on May 9, with the current big hitters of Marvel’s Thunderbolts* and Ryan Coogler and Michael B. Jordan’s Sinners heading into their second and fourth weekends, respectively. While its limited showing won’t make Watch the Skies an immediate box office success, the word of mouth that comes from it will be massively important.
Flawless and XYZ Films are going to want the kind of responses that attendees of test screenings gave: “I really think this is going to make foreign films more accessible;” “If more foreign films were like this, hell yeah dude, I’d be more on board;” “it opens up a whole world of films for people to watch.”
All of those were shared from a promo reel from Flawless and XYZ Films, so take them with a grain of salt. But if those sentiments are echoed by the general public, then we may indeed be on the precipice of a foreign film revolution.
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