"Sheep in the box" in competition at the Cannes Film Festival: Hirokazu Kore-eda uses AI to talk about what makes us human

Hirokazu Kore-eda, a major figure in world cinema, is one of the great regulars at the Cannes Film Festival. He has already come ten times, and has already been rewarded with numerous prizes. With Nobody Knowsin 2004 he offered the Male Actor Prize to Yagira Yuya, the youngest actor awarded on the Croisette. In 2013, Like father, like son is crowned with the Jury Prize. In 2018, A family affair brings him the Palme d’Or. In 2023, he receives for L’Innocence the Best Screenplay Prize, before returning in 2024 as a member of the jury. He returns to the other side of the mirror this year with the competitive selection of Sheep in the box, presented in Cannes on Saturday May 16. The film will be released in theaters on December 16, 2026.

Otone, an architect, and her husband Kensuke, a carpenter, lost their son. He was 7 years old when he died accidentally. They cannot console themselves for this loss. When a drone places a large advertisement for humanoids, larger than life, to replace the deceased, they are tempted by a little visit to the company that offers this service, “just to see”.

Otone is delighted, Kensuke is more skeptical but he lets himself be convinced. Shortly after, a carbon copy of Kakeru, their missing son, arrives at the house. An adorable little boy who could easily be confused with a human if he didn’t come with instructions for use, an ON/OFF button at the back of his neck, and a formal ban on eating or taking a bath.

With this new anticipation film, the Japanese filmmaker is once again interested in family, a theme at the heart of his work. What is attachment? How to grieve for a child? How can we accept death, and more broadly how can we accept letting our children one day leave home to take flight? This is what this new film by Hirokazu Kore-eda tells. Questions that he puts on stage this time by imagining the arrival in a family of a small robot rented to replace a missing child.

From this disturbing scenario, in an alternation of humor and more tragic situations, the Japanese director has fun questioning the place of AI in our lives. What do we know how to do that humanoids can’t do, apart from “donate our blood” ? This question, and many others, permeate this story. This staging of AI is also, and above all, a pretext for probing what is “invisible to the eyes”namely what makes us human beings.

The film is deployed in cold light, with a dominant blue, refined settings, which contrast with the world that the little humanoid builds in his room, and his interest in plants, in trees, in the forest. Why is a robot interested in nature? “If we observe how generative AI works, it is closer to the trees and the forest than to us, human beings. The communication, the links that exist between humanoids is invisible, as with trees. It is this similarity that made me make this connection”explains Hirokazu Kore-eda.

The trees, the forest, appear like a dream world in which to live for Kakeru and his friends. “Obviously, this place towards which children, whether humanoid or human, tend, is a place of happiness for them. Nevertheless, the human children in this group are children who have suffered violence and who have been abandoned by their parents, and the humanoids, ultimately, have been used by the “By leaving, they free themselves from those who use them.” explains the director. The robot leaves and leaves his parents with the small tree they planted together in front of their house. His passing will not have replaced their son, but will have helped them to mourn, to heal their guilt, and to accept resuming their lives, without him.

Bringing seemingly irreconcilable elements together is what makes the architect’s profession so special, explains Otone to Kakeru. This is also what makes this new film by the Japanese director, who draws in Sheep in the box a harmony with a blend of technology, humanity and nature. With this contemplative film, Hirokazu Kore-eda transforms the worrying shadow that AI projects on the world into the raw material for a poetic and profoundly human work. With this luminous film, he could well seduce the jury of this 79^e édition.

Genre : Drame
Titre original : “Hako no Naka no Hitsuji”
Réalisation : Hirokazu Kore-eda
With : Haruka Ayase, Daigo Yamamoto, Rimu Kuwaki
Pays : Japan
Durée :  2h 07min
Sortie : December 16, 2026
Distributeur : The Pact
Synopsis : In the near future, Otone and her husband Kensuke, who lost their child, are offered a humanoid robot totally identical to their son.