A favorite of the Japanese art house, Hirokazu Kore-eda is a somewhat unlikely figure to explore the sci-fi implications of generative artificial intelligence. The 63-year-old auteur, who won the Palme d’Or at the 2018 Cannes Film Festival for his film ThievesHe left his indelible mark on world cinema with his subtle family drama, full of satirical humor and aching humanity, much more than Futurism. But for his seventeenth film, Sheep in a boxKore-eda sets its story in a speculative world right on the horizon—where packages are delivered by drones, all cars are electric, and generative AI has reached the most intimate realms of human experience.
The film stars Haruka Ayase and Daigo Yamamoto as a young couple who mourn the recent death of their son. They live in a leafy suburb of Tokyo in an elegant, sunlit house designed by the wife, an architect, and built by the husband, a carpenter with a deep reverence for high-quality wood. But the weight of their grief is as palpable as the utopian appearance of their surroundings. A dubious promise of relief arrives in the form of a new AI robotics company – one that specializes in recreating vividly realistic androids for lost loved ones. Initially, the bereaved parents soon welcome a little human (played by newcomer Kawaki Reimu) into their home who is indistinguishable from their late beloved son, Kakeru – save for the power button at the back of his neck and the nocturnal need to sit on his charging station.
In other hands, the stage will be set for Black mirror— like a dystopian horror film, but unsurprisingly, Kore-eda takes its premise into less obvious, more nuanced emotional territory. You could say that one of world cinema’s greatest humanists extends his grace to embrace the post-human world.
Hollywood Reporter I reached out to Kore-eda in Tokyo before Cannes to discuss how to do this Sheep in a box came around.
Tell me about the creative origins of this project. Where did this hypothesis come from?
In general, I have become interested in generative AI. But the most defining spark for this story came to me in March 2024, when I came across an article about a Chinese startup. [called Super Brain] Artificial intelligence is used to revive people who have died. It got me more interested, and I wrote a little treatment. Later that fall, I was on a trip to Beijing for other purposes, and arranged an opportunity to speak with the company’s founder, Zhang Ziwei. He gave me a demo of how their service works. Essentially, they use a range of data about the deceased person, including audio and visual data – photos and videos – and create an AI image of the deceased person that their loved ones can interact with. What I’ve found great is that technology makes it possible to have new conversations with them, not just cover topics you’ve discussed with them before. I found the whole thing risky, but I can also see how this is something that would inevitably spread. So I decided to expand my treatment and explore these issues more deeply.
I was amazed at how Sheep in a box It’s a very optimistic view of AI in general. It’s not particularly miserable. How did you arrive at this point of view?
I can’t say I’m particularly well-read in science fiction, but when you consider Isaac Asimov’s famous Three Laws of Robotics [which can be paraphrased as: A robot may not harm a human being; a robot must obey human orders, unless those orders conflict with the first law; and a robot must protect its own existence, unless doing so conflicts with the first or second law] They’re too centralized. It’s all based on the idea that humans will always be the center of this world. And I’ve always felt a little uncomfortable with that approach. I believe that as AI and robots develop, they will surpass humanity, and at that point, humanity will no longer be something they really care about. They will want to connect with something bigger. This is what I see as the most realistic outcome anyway.
So, one of the first ideas I had was that I wanted my story to be based around the idea of robots choosing not to exist among humans. Then I started thinking about how children are always outgrowing and surpassing their parents – you know, the idea of leaving the nest, and eventually living a life that parents sometimes struggle to keep up with. I decided to layer these two stories, and that’s basically what happened.
How did you approach the world-building aspect of the project – and decide how futuristic the film’s pseudo-sci-fi setting would be?
One of the big themes in the film is the idea of the box, so the main achievement of the production was finding the modern house we shot as the couple’s home. It is made up of overlapping boxes, and if you take a bird’s eye view of the entire structure, it is basically a box with a square garden courtyard in the middle. Finding that house and drawing different ideas from it was huge for the production. Not just in terms of scene details or art direction, but because the sets themselves were designed to go with the layout of the actual house, and I revised some things in the script after taking inspiration from the architecture.
The house itself is located in Kamakura, an area a little farther away from Tokyo and very different from the downtown feel I pictured in Thieves. Kamakura is a bit upscale, feeling more open and connected to nature. In this sense, both the city and the home are highly developed.
The real house was built by a couple who live there with their children. The wife is an architect and the husband works for a construction company, just like the characters in our story. We rented the house as is. It was the basis for the entire movie.
We also witness the mother’s creative process as an architect throughout the story. It regularly uses artificial intelligence, but also continues to work in completely analog ways. She creates delicate paper models of her buildings, and there is a moment when she is drawn to the young android boy when he intervenes in her process and tries to tell her the answer to her creative experiment. “Don’t take that part away,” she told him. I sense some potentially educational notes on your part here — about how our relationship with AI has evolved, or should evolve, if we’re lucky and thoughtful.
Something I think about a lot these days is process. In Japanese, the word we might use to describe this type of activity is muda, which translates to waste, futility, or effort that doesn’t really lead to any direct value. But I feel like the time we spend in that state is what makes us human. So, with this scene you mentioned, I wanted to give some hints about that. But if you look at the whole story from a broader perspective, you’ll find that the couple is going through an evolution in processing their grief, their relationship, and how they relate to and feel about the android version of their son, and it’s precisely this process – the research and trial and error – that makes the film a humane portrayal. AI offers the promise of being able to give you the answer. In many contexts, this certainly saves time – it removes moda – but it doesn’t look good in the end. There’s no advantage to that. It’s like you get the answer without playing the game.
Finally, I have to ask… Does Hirokazu Kore-eda use AI and what is your relationship with it – in your work or daily life?
Personally, no, I don’t use it at all. never. But while I was making this film, I thought: “Why not try it?” So I asked one of my crew members to have ChatGPT read and evaluate my script. We explained our goals and asked, “What are some ideas you might have to make this scenario better?” I was hoping to have a productive back and forth. And it was fine. It was interesting. I could see how it was fun to talk to him – but he didn’t give me any unexpected answers. Maybe one day it will evolve to the point where it has the potential to give you something truly amazing and compelling, but that hasn’t been my experience.
