Hirokazu Kore-eda’s new film is set in the near future, where a married couple decide to welcome a humanoid robot into their home as their son.
Otone (Haruka Ayase) and Kensuke Komoto (Daigo Yamamoto) have recently lost their son, Kakeru (Rimu Kuwaki), and in their grief, Otone receives an advertisement that creates humanoid robots of deceased loved ones. On the surface, Kakeru is a perfect physical replica of the son Otone and Kensuke lost, but the limitations of the technology underscore the gap between the son they’ve lost and the one they now have. Kore-eda (Cannes Palme d’Or winner with ‘Shoplifters’) has always been a humanist filmmaker, one who has no naïveté about our capacity for destruction, even as he celebrates the ways people, despite their own self-interests, can sacrifice and care for each other. Here, he offers a new way to rethink holding on to grief, resulting in a wistful poem of a movie. (Subtitles)
Japan 2026 Hirokazu Kore-eda 126m
