South Korean director Na Hong-jin releases short film shot entirely on a smartphone

South Korean director Na Hong-jin has unveiled a short film shot entirely on a Samsung smartphone. The film, titled Faith, is a violent short, which follows a one-armed gunman blasting his way through enemies in search of a coveted key.

The film was shot on a Galaxy S23 Ultra, as part of a series of collaborations between Samsung and filmmakers, which aims to showcase the phone’s potential for creatives.

Na, who is known for directing The Chaser, The Yellow Sea and The Wailing, carries on his distinct brand of intensely dark and intense visual style in Faith — remarkably creating strikingly clear scenes even in low light.

Commenting on the project, he said: “I wanted to show that I can make clips that are of a professional level with the Galaxy S23 Ultra, and this experience was overall very interesting and exciting.”

One of the major advantages of shooting on a smartphone, he said, was to capture movements vividly and easily through any angle, "which would have otherwise been impossible by a larger camera".

Reactions to the video were varied. Korean film fans responded positively to the film, with one commenter remarking: “This turned out awesome. I hope Samsung invests more in its own content like this.”

Some, however, joked about the phone’s performance, with one questioning: “How many times did you have to stop recording because your phone got hot?”

Others referenced a recent controversy over Samsung’s presentation of photographs of the moon, taken using the Space Zoom function on its Galaxy S20 Ultra model — which appears to be enhanced using AI. “This may be [a] fake one like Samsung did with fake moon shooting,” one remarked.

Chung Chung-hoon, a director who worked with Na on the project, said he “tried to reduce the lighting even further to highlight the dark atmosphere as though I was filming a regular movie". He added: "To my surprise, the details were alive.”

“Even when the camera was constantly moving, it did not lose focus,” said Chung, “and what was surprising about the Galaxy S23 Ultra was that the 120-frame was able to express a very natural motion blur and speed just as well as a high-speed professional camera.”

Faith is not the first film to be shot on a smartphone. In 2017, 300 director Zack Snyder released Snow Steam Iron, a short which was filmed using an iPhone 7 Plus. The psychological thriller Unsane by Steven Soderbergh (2018) was filmed using the same device.