Koreeda answers Cannes backlash over Sheep in the Box

Koreeda addresses – Hirokazu Koreeda says many Cannes viewers expected a darker AI dystopia, but “Sheep in the Box” refuses to go where they assumed. In an interview after its 2026 premiere, he discussed the film’s near-future grief story, the research behind its family dynamics,

A day before the Palme d’Or ceremony. Hirokazu Koreeda’s “Sheep in the Box” sat in the spotlight at Cannes under a kind of pressure you can feel from the outside: some grids were lukewarm. some audiences looked startled. and the expectations in the room kept moving in one direction—toward an “AI dystopian” story.

Koreeda. speaking a couple days after the film’s premiere. didn’t sound defensive so much as quietly attentive to what he’d been hearing. “I feel all the interviews today and yesterday have given me a good idea of how people have received the film. ” he said. “And what struck me is that it seems a lot of people were expecting some AI dystopian. controlled-by-robots story and that they are surprised that it doesn’t end that way. for better or worse.”.

That mismatch—between what viewers arrived wanting and what the film delivers—seemed to color the broader Cannes conversation around Japan’s unprecedented run this year. It’s the first time in a quarter century that three Japanese directors have films in competition at Cannes: Ryusuke Hamaguchi. Koji Fukada. and grand master Hirokazu Koreeda. Hamaguchi’s “All of a Sudden” is a nearly 200-minute follow-up to his Oscar-winning “Drive My Car” and is considered by many to be a frontrunner. Fukada’s “Nagi Notes” has been respected for its elegance and quietude. and although “Shoplifters” won the Palme D’Or in 2018. the response to Koreeda’s “Sheep in the Box” has generally skewed negative.

Asked if it felt different to open Cannes with Japan serving as the Country of Honor, Koreeda said not really. Then he added a detail that landed less like personal ego and more like gratitude for the chance to be seen. “A lot of groups from Japan who usually don’t get a chance to attend film festivals or would probably only have had a short stay here would have had a very good experience. I think.”.

He also pushed past the ceremony talk and into what the competition might mean beyond Japan’s pavilion. Koreeda said he hopes increased representation continues. but he doesn’t believe it’s simply thanks to support from the Japanese film industry. He pointed to the young directors in competition—Fukada and Hamaguchi—saying they’ve been on the radar for 10 years or so. and that they’ve received more support in France than they have in Japan. “I think that’s given Japan something to think about,” he said. “The Japanese film world needs to put some thought into how to support the next lot of talent coming through.”.

The film itself is built to complicate the kind of AI story people say they expected. “Sheep in the Box” is a science fiction near-future drama about two grieving parents who adopt a humanoid AI replica of their late seven-year-old son. Koreeda’s title nods to Antoine de Saint-Exupéry’s 20th-century book “The Little Prince. ” which features illustrations of a sheep and a box. but the motivations behind the film—he said in a statement—are manifold. The idea was sparked when he first read a news article about Chinese businesses using generative AI to bring the deceased back to life.

One line in the movie lands as a theme with teeth: a character asks. “Who do the dead really belong to?” Koreeda said he’s posed that question in his films as early as “After Life.” He also connected his fascination with reanimation and Frankenstein to a frustration with the threats to the human imagination AI poses—driving him toward a story that holds grief and philosophy in the same frame.

In Kamakura, a forty-something middle-class couple—Otone Komoto (Ayase Haruka) and woodworker Kensuke Komoto (Daigo)—adopt Kakeru, the AI humanoid. Kakeru’s “adopted” age matches the couple’s son’s age. and Koreeda pointed out a creative choice behind that resemblance: he wrote humanoid Kakeru to “develop and grow faster than a human child does. ” leading to exchanges inside the new nuclear family that are both philosophical and sometimes unsettling.

The film gives Kakeru a statistical way of speaking to pain. At one point. Kakeru attempts to attenuate Otone’s guilt with a statistic: 68% of all moms have at some point decided to abandon their children. Then, when Kakeru shows signs of wanting independence, Otone reasons that nothing new is happening—abandonment happens to all parents. Koreeda also underscored the emotional mechanics of the character: since Kakeru is an AI. Kakeru shows awareness that he has been programmed not to feel sad.

Koreeda’s approach to those details, he said, is closer to research than invention. “It’s basically research,” he said. “For example. when I was trying to figure out what was the relationship that [Otone] has with her mother that is still troubling her. I asked different people. including friends. They said they were traumatized by their mothers saying to them. ‘I’m not going to be your mother anymore.’ That was quite dramatic. So I figured that’s what had happened in this relationship. Her mother had said this to her. and Otone now finds herself part of this chain where she is saying the same thing to her child.”.

The child actor Rimu Kuwaki, who plays Kakeru, became part of that method too. Koreeda said Kuwaki didn’t really ask questions about Kakeru’s nature as an AI because Koreeda “wasn’t like I had asked him to act like a robot.” Instead. he said the discomfort came from how the adults around Kakeru had to live with the overlap between the boy and their memories. “It wasn’t something I emphasized for him. ” Koreeda said. adding that when Kakeru says to his mom. “Would you be happier without me?” he didn’t direct Kuwaki to perform robot behavior so much as direct the adults so they would find it uncomfortable.

When asked about narrative structure—whether he’d considered a framework like “Monster. ” with three chapters each emphasizing and revealing a particular perspective and backstory—Koreeda said the idea hadn’t crossed his mind. Still, he pointed to similarity in the way the story shifts. “But the second half of the film. where the humanoid is becoming independent. is growing out of the sight of his parents. and eventually leaves his parents. I think that is similar [to ‘Monster’] in the way that that’s all happening out of the view of the parents.”.

Even the film’s adaptation of the “Little Prince” sheep-in-a-box notion turns inward, shaping how characters view themselves. Koreeda said the book’s fox role maps onto the boy who takes out Kakeru’s GPS. who shares a certain philosophy with him. When asked about the rose, Koreeda chuckled and said, “I haven’t given any thought to the rose.”.

“Sheep in the Box” premiered at the 2026 Cannes Film Festival, and Neon will release the film at a later date. The question hanging over the movie as awards week approaches is less about whether audiences were moved—and more about whether they were expecting the kind of ending Koreeda refused to provide.

Hirokazu Koreeda Sheep in the Box Cannes 2026 Palme d'Or Japan Country of Honor Ryusuke Hamaguchi Koji Fukada Ayase Haruka Daigo Rimu Kuwaki Neon