Title: Sheep in the Box
Section: Competition
Director-screenwriter: Hirokazu Kore-eda
Sales agent: Goodfellas
Logline: Set in the near future, Otone Komoto works as an architect. She is married to Kensuke Komoto, who runs a construction company. The married couple decide to welcome a humanoid robot into their home as their son.
Panelist: Hirokazu Kore-eda
Key quotes: “A couple of years ago, I read an article about a company that was becoming popular in China that resurrected the dead through the use of generative AI. And I also recall that a few years before, there’d been an attempt in Japan to resurrect a very famous pop star, dead pop star, to sing a completely new song. And it’s been very controversial. But I also thought that if I had this option available to me, I might actually use it to go back… and talk to my parents and to have one more opportunity to talk to them. I understood the weakness that would make people want to do that, and that was the starting point.”
“The film features a humanoid, but it’s actually about humanity and what it is that sets us apart as humanity and makes us human. And that is imagination… I use the scene from The Little Prince [the book by Antoine de Saint-Exupéry], where you have to imagine the sheep that’s inside the box. And whether you can do that or not. And so I thought that was a fitting title [for my movie].”
‘Sheep in the Box’
Cannes Film Festival
The Deadline Studio at Cannes is sponsored by SCAD.
