An adorable little Japanese boy plays with his parents at the playground, plants a tree in their front yard and snuggles in bed reading The Little Prince. All appears sweet and natural until bedtime, when instead of slipping beneath the covers, he takes a seat on his charging station and powers down, a small button on the back of his night emitting an eerie blue glow.
So begins the first official trailer (see it below) for Japanese arthouse star Hirokazu Kore-eda‘s latest feature, Sheep in the Box. The film premiered in competition at this year’s Cannes Film Festival — where Kore-eda won the Palme d’Or for Shoplifters in 2018 — and it will open in New York and Los Angeles on July 24, before rolling out nationwide over the weeks that follow.
Koreeda’s 17th feature unfolds in a Japan a half-step into the future, where drones deliver everything, the cars are all electric and generative AI has reached into the most intimate corners of family life. Architect Otone (Haruka Ayase) and her carpenter husband Kensuke (comedian turned actor Daigo) are wracked with grief over the death of their young son when they come upon a new robotics company whose services target families in their sad predicament. Using the photos, videos and other digital traces of a lost love one, the company creates AI-powered humanoid replicas of the deceased, offering families a replacement and continuation of sorts. The story takes flight when the android creation of their beloved son arrives in a box at Otone and Kensuke’s doorstep in the Tokyo suburbs.
In other hands, such a premise might inspire some Black Mirror-style dystopian dread, but as the trailer’s ethereal tone makes clear, Kore-eda, characteristically, has a gentler, more humane take on what AI could portend for human relationships.
“I believe that as AI and androids evolve, they are going to transcend humanity,” Koreeda told The Hollywood Reporter in an interview before Cannes. “They will want to connect with something bigger.”
Koreeda wrote, directed and edited Sheep in the Box. He reunites behind the camera with cinematographer Ryuto Kondo, who also shot Shoplifters and his acclaimed 2023 feature Monster. The film was produced by Fuji Television, Gaga, Toho and AOI Pro.
In the U.S., the film will be released by Neon, continuing the specialty distributor’s long run of handling recent Cannes standouts. International sales are handled by Gaga and Goodfellas.