'Who Does the Dead Belong To?' — Kore-eda's Question for the AI Age

An interview with Kore-eda Hirokazu on "Sheep in the Box"

The film competes at the 79th Cannes Film Festival — his 10th invitation

"We must someday draw a line on our over-reliance on technology"

The film envisions a new community of humanoid robots, humans and nature

Director Kore-eda Hirokazu [provided by Media Castle]

Otone (played by Ayase Haruka) and Kensuke (played by Daigo) have been living with the grief of losing their 7-year-old son when a humanoid robot named Kakeru (played by Kuwaki Rimu) appears in their lives. Otone welcomes Kakeru — who looks exactly like her late son — as though her child has returned. Kensuke, however, cannot bring himself to accept a robot wearing his son's face as a member of the family.

Even so, warmth returns to the household with Kakeru's arrival. A smile reappears on Otone's face, and Kensuke, too, cautiously begins to open his heart to Kakeru. The fact that Kakeru is a robot, however, never changes.

As time passes, the couple begins to notice ways in which Kakeru differs from their late son — in behavior, in manner — and they push back: "A human wouldn't do that," they tell him, or "Kakeru would never act like that." Meanwhile, Kakeru finds companionship among fellow humanoid robots who have no desire to remain mere stand-ins for a human past. A family fractures under mounting tension; humanoid robots yearn for freedom. Can this household hold together? That is the world of director Kore-eda Hirokazu's <style ref="s1">"Sheep in the Box."</style>

A scene from "Sheep in the Box" [provided by Media Castle]

This reporter met director Kore-eda Hirokazu on Friday at the NEW headquarters in Nonhyeon-dong, Gangnam-gu, Seoul, where he had come to promote "Sheep in the Box." It was his first visit to Korea in a year, following last year's special retrospective "25 Years with Kore-eda" at Cinecube. Kuwaki Rimu, who beat out 200 other candidates to land the role of the humanoid Kakeru, was also present. The interview opened with a shy greeting in Korean: "Annyeonghaseyo, Kuwaki Rimu imnida."

Kore-eda first encountered Kuwaki through the audition for the role of Kakeru. He said he felt an immediate certainty: "Without this child, Kakeru simply wouldn't work." True to the director's instinct, Kuwaki delivers a fully convincing performance as a humanoid who looks human but lacks a certain warmth. Through his acting, Kore-eda's narrative of coexistence between humans and humanoid robots — a near-future world the director imagined "10 years from now" — finds its persuasive footing.

What makes the performance all the more remarkable is that Kuwaki had no prior acting experience. Most of what he brought to the role he created himself. On set, the director's main instruction was simply: "Blink as little as possible."

"Director Kore-eda didn't give me any specific direction about how to act like a robot," Kuwaki said. "The thing he told me most often was, 'Just be yourself.' So I performed thinking I had to be true to who I am."

Kuwaki Rimu, who plays the humanoid Kakeru in "Sheep in the Box" [provided by Media Castle]

Kore-eda is one of Japan's most celebrated directors. He won the Palme d'Or at the 71st Cannes International Film Festival in 2018 for "Shoplifters." "Sheep in the Box," which competed at this year's Cannes Film Festival, marks his 10th invitation to Cannes and his eighth time in competition.

For Kuwaki, the debut film that will define his career now bears the name of a master — though he laughed and admitted he had not fully grasped just how towering a figure Kore-eda was.

"I only knew he was a great director," Kuwaki said. "But working with him, I found he was warm and attentive to his actors." Throughout the interview, Kore-eda sat beside Kuwaki and watched intently whenever the young actor paused to think, as though the question had been put to him as well.

The screenplay for "Sheep in the Box" took shape after Kore-eda came across reports of a business in China that used generative AI to resurrect the dead. He wrote the film by asking himself the question that also appears as a line of dialogue: "Who does a dead person belong to?"

The film is populated by characters — including Otone and Kensuke — who have brought back a child lost too soon in the form of a robot, seeking comfort in words they never got to say. Kore-eda said he felt deep empathy for the grief of loss, yet trained a sharp, questioning eye on this particular form of human healing. In his view, a humanoid given the name of a dead child is, in essence, a product of human selfishness.

"I began to feel an ethical unease about people resurrecting the dead as they please, simply to ease their own pain," Kore-eda said. "I also wondered whether an excessive reliance on technology might end up halting the very process of genuine grief and healing. The dead should belong to the dead. I believe there must come a moment when we draw a line on our use of such technology."

For much of his career, Kore-eda has explored and expanded the meaning of community through the lens of family. "Nobody Knows" (2004) depicted abandoned children forming a makeshift family of their own. "Shoplifters" (2018) followed people with no legal or blood ties who chose one another and became a family. "Like Father, Like Son" (2013) argued that family is shaped not by bloodline alone but by shared time and relationship.

In "Sheep in the Box," he pushes that concept one step further. It is Kakeru — not a human — who is the first to use the word "family" in the film. Humanoid robots brought into existence by human desire and then discarded by human hands band together and build a new community in the forest. Among them are humans who have themselves been abused by other humans. Kakeru calls them his family, his home.

Kore-eda described the arc as "a story that follows a child as he grows and forms a family not with his parents, but with other kinds of beings."

"I imagined the humanoid robots building a new community," Kore-eda said. "There would be humans in it, and machines, and the forest itself. If only humanoid robots lived in the forest, all you would see is a division between humans and machines — so I wanted to show a place where many different kinds of beings coexist. The concept of family that takes shape through Kakeru clearly goes beyond anything we already know."

Kore-eda attended the 79th Cannes Film Festival last month with "Sheep in the Box." Asked what moment had left the deepest impression, he smiled and recalled a chance exchange of glances with director Park Chan-wook at the opening ceremony.

"I was watching the opening ceremony from the audience when I caught the eye of director Park Chan-wook, who was standing on stage," Kore-eda said. "He smiled at that moment. I thought, 'Oh, he recognizes me' — but it turned out director Bong Joon-ho was sitting right behind me. To this day I have no idea whether that smile was meant for me or for Bong."

Once the promotional run for "Sheep in the Box" wraps up, Kore-eda plans to move straight into his next project. First, a live-action adaptation of manga artist Fujimoto Tatsuki's same-titled work, "Look Back," will reach audiences this year — a film for which Kore-eda handled the screenplay, direction and editing himself. Next year, he plans to release an English-language film alongside Hollywood actor Eddie Redmayne.

"There is still a lot I find difficult to say about 'Look Back,'" Kore-eda said. "It is a manga I personally love and deeply respect. What I will say is that a manga drawn on paper and a film with real human beings in it will inevitably be different things. Fans of the original may feel some anxiety — but I hope they can wait just a little longer."

balme@heraldcorp.com