Name: Sheep in the Box
Director: Hirokazu Kore-eda
Released: 2026
Duration: 126 min

In Hirokazu Kore-eda’s sci-fi-inflected parable, a bereaved couple adopt an AI-powered android to deal with a tragic loss.

In a near-future Japan of delivery drones and diet-monitoring fridges, REbirth has devised the ultimate remedy for grieving parents: a ‘replacement’ in the form of an anthropomorphic robot. Two years prior, an accident took architect Otone and carpenter Kensuke’s son Kakeru; when REbirth offers them a free trial, Otone doesn’t hesitate. While she becomes enamoured of the revived Kakeru, Kensuke is sceptical: “It’s a Tamagotchi. It’s a Roomba.” Gradually, they learn that making do is not the same as moving on.

Despite its sci-fi trappings, Sheep in the Box is, more accurately, a study of complicated families, building on director Hirokazu Kore-eda’s earlier works Broker (MIFF 2022), Like Father, Like Son (MIFF 2013) and the Palme d’Or–winning Shoplifters (MIFF 2018). Inspired by an illustration from The Little Prince and evoking Pinocchio with its (not so) ‘real boy’, the film raises questions about humanity, loss and the ways technology can both help and harm. Actors Haruka Ayase (Our Little Sister, MIFF 2015) and Daigo movingly portray Otone’s technophilia and Kensuke’s neo-Luddism as synecdoche for coping, while Rimu Kuwaki precociously imbues the robotic Kakeru with an affecting emotional depth.

“Kore-eda turns the stuff of dystopian nightmares into a beautiful fairytale study of loss … one of his purest, most dreamlike films to date.” – Deadline