Is Indonesia Quietly Building the Future of Cinema?
With AI cutting production costs by up to 99%, the country’s film industry is showing how technology can level the playing field for global storytelling.
• Indonesia’s filmmakers are using AI tools to produce visually stunning films for less than 1% of Hollywood’s cost.
• AI-assisted production is now being endorsed by national film associations and integrated into film schools, signaling a systemic shift.
• The approach is reshaping global cinema economics, proving that creativity, not capital, might define the next generation of film.
Indonesia’s film industry is quietly changing how movies get made. While Hollywood wrestles with rising budgets and delayed releases, filmmakers in Jakarta are producing visually rich films on shoestring budgets. Their advantage isn’t bigger studios or more funding. It’s how they are using artificial intelligence to stretch creativity and time.
Across Jakarta’s creative community, teams rely on tools like Sora 2, Runway, Midjourney, and ChatGPT to design scenes, generate effects, edit footage, and refine scripts. VFX editors, for example, have noted how rotoscoping that previously took weeks is now done in seconds, with early drafts being completed about 70% faster than before.
But this shift began out of necessity. Independent filmmakers with limited budgets needed ways to compete with streaming giants. Experimenting with AI quickly turned from a survival tactic into a creative advantage. Even the Indonesian Film Producer Association now supports AI production, with its chairperson Agung Sentausa saying it allows the country to produce “films that match Hollywood quality on smaller budgets.”
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