AI-Generated Sci-Fi Film Trace Project Premieres in Singapore on National Day, Creator Hits Back at 'AI Slop' Critics

National Day weekend is becoming an unlikely showcase for Singapore's AI filmmaking experiments. Hot on the heels of the zombie-apocalypse short Bersama Majulah comes Trace Project, a full-length AI-generated sci-fi feature that premieres on Aug 9 with a single screening at Golden Village VivoCity. The 64-minute film follows Lin Jia Jun, an ordinary young man raised in Singapore's public housing who becomes the country's first astronaut, sent to Mars under a global resettlement programme as Earth's ecosystem collapses. Through a cognitive brain-link, he shares every emotion in real time with Chen Hui Min, who watches from Earth — and discovers Mars is a brutal test of survival rather than the promised land.

The film is the work of FizzDragon, a production company founded by Pax Chen, an NUS electrical engineering graduate who says the story began as a novel she wrote herself. Chen once wanted to pursue aerospace engineering, and she reads the protagonist's arc as a Singapore story: "Singapore is a small country, but it has always had a remarkable ability to think beyond its physical limitations." The National Day premiere date, she says, was suggested by a senior figure at the Singapore Film Society as the right moment to present a fictional view of the country's future.

Trace Project is also a deliberate statement about how AI films get made. FizzDragon's previous feature, Pirate Queen: Zheng Yi Sao, drew on a team of more than 130 creators across 13 countries. For Trace Project, the company worked with a team of about 10 people across three countries — an experiment, in Chen's words, in whether a small team using a new generation of creative technology can reach beyond the constraints that traditionally determine which stories get made. The marketing phase has already drawn the backlash she anticipated: commenters online have labelled the film "AI slop" and criticised the local industry, with screenshots circulating on Instagram. Chen's response is unapologetic — new products are always measured against old yardsticks, she argues, comparing AI to the automobile, which was initially slower than horse-drawn carriages and went on to reshape society.

The single screening comes amid a broader reckoning for generative media in Singapore. Regulators are tightening transparency expectations — China's AI microdrama The Peach Blossom Hairpin was taken down over consent and labelling issues, and local watchdogs are moving toward clearer disclosure norms. FizzDragon, meanwhile, is already looking past National Day: the film will land on its own app after the premiere, and international distribution has been confirmed in markets including Malaysia and the United States.

Why it matters for Singapore: Trace Project matters less as a movie than as a marker of how fast the local creative economy is moving on AI — a small team, an original Singapore story, and a production pipeline built entirely around generative tools. The "AI slop" debate it has triggered is exactly the conversation Singapore needs to have out loud: as the country pushes AI adoption across every sector through the National AI Strategy, the creative industries are where the cultural discomfort is most visible. Whether Trace Project is celebrated or derided, it has already done something useful — put a Singapore-made, AI-generated feature in front of a paying audience on National Day and let the public argue about what that means.