The first feature film production shot entirely on a smartphone will have its theatrical premiere in Los Angeles on 16 December.

Olive, which is written-up as a movie involving "a little girl who transforms the lives of three people without speaking one word", was filmed on a Nokia N8. This was then double-taped to a set of traditional film-camera lenses.

In an interview with the Los Angeles Times, the filmmaker Hooman Khalili described how he had to hack the phone to turn off its auto-zoom. "The camera thinks it knows what you want to focus on," he said. "But it doesn't know."

The rest of the film's production was a tad more traditional. Khalili hired a casting director, location scouts, make-up artists and a Hollywood star (two-time Oscar nominee Gena Rowlands), bringing the total budget up to $500,000. The money was supplied by Chris Kelly, former chief privacy officer at Facebook, when Nokia turned down Khalili's request for funding.

Olive will be screened at the Laemmle Fallbrook 7 cinema in West Hills, LA, making it eligible for consideration in the Oscars race. The first five minutes of the film are available to watch below.

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