Director Hirokazu Kore-eda explores AI’s role in grief in Cannes contender Sheep In The Box
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(From left) Director Hirokazu Kore-eda and actors Haruka Ayase, Rimu Kuwaki and Daigo Yamamoto at the screening of Sheep In The Box at the Cannes Film Festival in France on May 16, 2026.
PHOTO: AFP
CANNES, France – If a couple loses a child, would it be ethical to use artificial intelligence (AI) to try to recreate the child if it eases their grief? And what happens when that AI decides it has its own interests beyond the family that it was meant to console?
These are the questions posed by Japanese film-maker Hirokazu Kore-eda, whose Cannes Film Festival entry, Sheep In The Box, imagines a near-future in which technology offers a way to comfort the bereaved.
The 2018 winner of the festival’s top prize for Shoplifters (2018) said his latest sci-fi work was inspired by his encounter with a Chinese entrepreneur who was developing AI systems capable of simulating deceased people.
“These resurrected dead were carrying on conversations, not just reliving the past, but also continuing to build new relationships and accumulate shared experiences,” Kore-eda, 63, told a press conference on May 17.
“I felt there would be people who would want to use a service like this,” added the writer-director known for such quietly observed family dramas as Shoplifters and Like Father, Like Son (2013).
Japanese director and screenwriter Hirokazu Kore-eda at the photo call for Sheep In The Box at the Cannes Film Festival in France on May 17, 2026.
PHOTO: AFP
That prospect, he said, also led to an ethical question: “Is it really acceptable for the living to manipulate the existence of the dead however they please?”
Sheep In The Box follows a grieving couple, Otone and Kensuke Komoto – played by Haruka Ayase and Daigo Yamamoto respectively – who turn to a humanoid child (Rimu Kuwaki) built from data and memories of their deceased son to deal with their loss.
Initially hesitant, the father warms to the life-like robot, who becomes integrated into the couple’s lives. But he then befriends other humanoids, posing the risk the couple will be abandoned all over again.
(From left) Daigo Yamamoto, Rimu Kuwaki and Haruka Ayase in Sheep In The Box.
PHOTO: GOLDEN VILLAGE
Critics have generally been unconvinced. The Hollywood Reporter, alluding to the film’s cryptic title, said it was “thematically woolly”, while industry magazine IndieWire described it as “emotionally stunted”.
Sheep In The Box is one of 22 films in competition for the Palme d’Or, which will be awarded on May 23. REUTERS
Sheep In The Box opens in Singapore cinemas on June 25.