![\"Sheep](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/05\/1479177_sheepinthebox1_main_77768.jpg\")
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Dir\/scr: Hirokazu Koreeda. Japan. 2026. 126mins<\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s a Roomba\u201d says sceptical father Kensuke (Daigo) when a new domestic appliance enters his home. But this one doesn\u2019t hoover. It\u2019s a humanoid robot, formed in the image of the son Kensuke and his wife Otone (Haruka Ayase) lost two years previously. It\u2019s been supplied by a company called ReBirth, which provides walking, talking humanoid surrogates for grieving people.\u00a0In Cannes Competition\u00a0for the eighth time in 25 years, Japanese auteur Hirokazu Koreeda resists the pull of AI doom-mongering to table a thoughtful, poignant, sometimes funny and whimsical reflection on the future of humankind\u2019s coexistence with intelligent machines.<\/p>\n
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A penchant for saccharine touches undercuts the authority of the film\u2019s philosophical musings<\/p>\n
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Sheep In The Box is arguably not sci-fi at all, certainly not in the FX-laden dystopian mould set by other emotional android forays like Spielberg\u2019s A. I. Artificial Intelligence. But its grounded real-world credentials are compromised by a not entirely earned vein of sentimentality, and by the script\u2019s inability to fully digest an otsumami spread of bite-sized themes. Yet it\u2019s not difficult to see why Neon took rights for the US, UK and Australia in late 2025: though scattershot in the telling, this is a film of undeniable heart and charm that should perform well with international arthouse audiences.<\/p>\n
Koreeda has set the film in a very near future Japan that looks remarkably like today, one in which AI has not progressed far beyond its current status as an enabler of human desires, illusions and weaknesses. Sure, delivery drones are now widespread, kids are accompanied to school by traffic warden robots, and fridges tell you when you\u2019ve had enough beers for one day, but everything else is recognizably in a here and now that is gently tweaked by an insistent recourse to bright, flattening sunlight on faces and surfaces.<\/p>\n
Otone is an architect who still relies on analogue tools like the scale models she patiently makes for her clients, while her down-to-earth husband Kensuke is a master carpenter, attuned to the properties of different woods and the way they continue to live even when the tree has become timber. He\u2019s also a very human human, who slurps his food and slouches along in setta sandals that swish lazily on tarmac.<\/p>\n
Casting earthy Japanese comedian Daigo as Kensuke alongside the willowy, ethereal Ayase (previously used by the director in 2015\u2019s\u00a0Our Little Sister) works to establish their odd-couple dynamic and set up the dramatic tension of their seven-year-old son\u2019s reappearance into their lives two years on from the unspecified \u2018accident\u2019 that took him away. Otone is febrile with emotion, Kensuke distrustful. She sees the boy they lost, he sees a machine with a GPS tracker that doesn\u2019t eat or drink, mustn\u2019t get wet and is automatically put into sleep mode if it strays more than 30 metres from its \u2018owners\u2019.<\/p>\n
We know from the get-go that the couples\u2019 initial reactions to this curious, smart, loveable replica of their lost son \u2013 played affectingly by cute newcomer Rimu Kuwaki\u00a0\u2013 will change and chicane. It\u2019s difficult to keep a reborn son a secret, and when Otone\u2019s blowsy, judgemental mother drops in unexpectedly, or when Kensuke\u2019s work colleagues try to figure out how they should behave around this eerie spitting-image android, the film\u2019s aching untenability floats to the surface.<\/p>\n
Yet the film also enacts the messiness that, according to Otone, makes us human (\u201cI want to struggle with difficulties, I don\u2019t want quick solutions\u201d, she says to her robot \u2018son\u2019 at one point). Back in his usual writer-director mode after entrusting the screenplay of his last feature, 2023\u2019s\u00a0Monster, to Yuji Sakamoto, Koreeda interleaves a story about a group of feral, independent ReBirth child-humanoids into what is essentially a story about two adults trying to face the fact that it\u2019s time to let go. It\u2019s a bold move, but it\u2019s one that makes better thematic than emotional sense.<\/p>\n
Sheep In The Box takes its title from an illustration in Antoine de Saint-Exupery\u2019s children\u2019s classic The Little Prince that pays homage to the power of the imagination. Boxes like the modernist house Otone and Kensuke live in, or the one that she is designing for a pair of crass but enthusiastic clients, are contrasted here with a more organic approach to architecture; one inspired by trees and the mycorrhizal networks that connect them underground. There\u2019s plenty of food for thought here, but the script\u2019s penchant for saccharine touches \u2013 one aided and abetted by a lilting string-led soundtrack that turns to treacle a little too often \u2013 undercuts the authority of the film\u2019s philosophical musings.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Production companies:\u00a0Fuji Television Network, GAGA Corporation, TOHO CO Ltd, AOI Pro. Inc.<\/p>\n