AI-dubbed Swedish sci-fi movie 'Watch the Skies' came about after the director had coffee and tarts with a local UFO chaser group (interview)
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When XYZ Films' Swedish sci-fi adventure movie "Watch the Skies" has its American debut on May 9, 2025, Hollywood and fans will also get a remarkable look at its AI-driven TrueSynch 'visual dubbing' administered by the British startup firm Flawless AI.
This nostalgic feature film is set in 1996 and focuses on a small town teenage girl named Denise, whose father mysteriously vanished one night years ago while investigating a flying saucer sighting in the nearby forested hills. Determined to unravel the reality behind his disappearance, the feisty girl bonds with a group of antisocial enthusiasts at a local UFO club called UFO Sweden, who aid her in searching out the truth about her dad in true "The X-Files"-like fashion.
Directed by Victor Danell for his Crazy Pictures production shingle, "Watch the Skies" will be the first flick to demonstrate this immersive technology, where the film's original Swedish-speaking cast has re-recorded their lines in English for AI tools to match lip movements. Once foreign films leave their home territory, an immediate language barrier exists. This pioneering new AI technology of "visual dubbing" opens up a whole new way to release and introduce their Swedish film (and countless others) to a far wider audience and helps retain the actors' screen performances.
Part of the movie's originality and warmth comes from the natural inclusion of cultural customs unique to the Swedish people, and that means the obligatory communal sipping of coffee and munching on tarts.
"It's a traditional Swedish thing that we do called Fika, where you have kind of a coffee break," Danell explains to Space.com. "Especially in these types of volunteer associations, what you do is have meetings where you're drinking coffee and having Fika and eating buns and tarts. And that's something we wanted to bring into the movie, because it's a bunch of outsiders that want to solve this big mystery, but they also just want to be together having Fika, coffee, and tarts."
The misfit UFO cult that forms "Watch the Skies"' core is based on an actual flying saucer society in the country called UFO Sweden, giving the project an engaging authenticity.
"We all grew up in the '80s and '90s with these old-fashioned sci-fi movies as our base in our filmmaking," he adds regarding project influences. "Who doesn't love early Steven Spielberg and films like that? So we were inspired by those movies and we heard about this group in Sweden, a real association called UFO Sweden. We saw a documentary about them and knew we had to look them up. Are they for real? What we found out is that UFO Sweden is based in our hometown called Norrköping.
"Not only that, but their headquarters are across the street from my apartment. So we just went down the street and knocked on the door and asked if we could come in to learn about their work. So we all sat down for Swedish Fika and they told us that they're a UFO investigation group and if you see something in the sky you can call them and they'll help find out what you saw. They're gathering an archive of UFO sightings from around the world in their basement and it's the largest UFO archive in the world. They showed us around and when we left their headquarters we knew that this was our next movie. We just needed to find a story that could take these lovely guys out on an adventure larger than they usually went on."
"Watch the Skies" is imbued with a heartfelt reality even though its story is rooted in paranormal events, and its striking cinematography enhances a certain retro appeal.
"The cinematographer is Hannes Krantz, one of our partners in Crazy Pictures. Actually, I built the lenses for this movie myself. It's a mix of old Contex still photography lenses with the anamorphic block off an old projector combined together. It's kind of nerdy but the look of the movie is a big part of making the audience feel like this is an old nostalgic throwback to the '70s and '80s. It was hard work making that look.
"Sweden doesn't do a lot of genre movies. We went into this thinking it would be quite hard to make a Swedish science fiction movie. It actually wasn't. I think the Swedish audience also is ready for one so it went quite easily. But it's still hard to make a good sci-fi movie. We're so excited to see what will happen with this movie. We released it in Sweden and now it's coming out in the U.S. and we're so thrilled to see how it will go."
"Watch the Skies" stars Inez Dahl Torhaug, Eva Melander, Jesper Barkselius, Sara Shirpey, Håkan Ehn, Isabelle Kyed, Niklas Kvarnbo Jönsson, and Mathias Lithner.
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