SHEEP IN THE BOX Trailer: Hirokazu Koreeda’s Not-Too-Futuristic Drama Arrives in July
Among the many Neon titles that graced this year’s Cannes Film Festival, Hirokazu Koreeda’s newest drama explores a vision of the future that may not be too far off from our era. Sheep in the Box stars Daigo Yamamoto and Haruka Ayase as a grieving married couple who buy a humanoid boy (Rimu Kuwaki) who resembles their deceased son. Following its North American premiere at Japan Cuts, Neon will release it in NY & LA on July 24 (the same day as Nicolas Winding Refn’s Her Private Hell), before expanding to further cities.
Savina Petkova wrote in her Cannes review, “Sheep in the Box aims to get to the heart of a parent-child relationship while appealing to the senses… Koreeda’s attempts, though, to ground a film about AI companions in such an obvious “nature/culture” metaphor end up lowering the stakes for Sheep in the Box a bit too much. What’s equally transparent is an allegory for parenting as relinquishing control framed as a question about humanoid autonomy, stretched too thin over the last act, but at a time when nothing scares a critic more than the suggestion that a certain film could have just as easily been made by/with AI, at least one can take comfort in the fact that Sheep in the Box is as man-made as The Little Prince.”
See the U.S. trailer and poster below.
