If My Dead Son Returned as an AI Boy... Another Question from Hirokazu Kore-eda [2026 Cannes Film Festival] - 매일경제

Steven Spielberg's 2001 film "A.I. Artificial Intelligence" naturally comes to mind when watching Hirokazu Kore-eda's Cannes Film Festival Competition section entry, "Sheep in the Box." Both works share the premise of an AI humanoid robot that stands in for a seven-year-old son. In "A.I. Artificial Intelligence," Monica brings home David, a humanoid AI robot, to fill the void left by her son, who is in a coma. In "Sheep in the Box," Otone brings home an AI robot named Kakeru to replace her dead son. When "A.I. Artificial Intelligence" was released 25 years ago, AI humanoid robots still felt like a distant future. Now, however, they are becoming a reality we may soon experience.

But the two films go in completely different directions. The former explores the desire and will of an AI robot that wants to become a real human, while the latter asks whether a fake can replace the real thing, and what conditions of acceptance and relationship are needed to embrace a new kind of other. Even so, the two films seem destined to be compared for a long time, since both relentlessly ask what AI means to human beings. On the 16th local time, this article took a look at "Sheep in the Box" at the Bazin Theatre in the Palais des Festivals et des Congrès, the main venue of the Cannes Film Festival.

It had been two years since Otone and Kensuke lost their son Kakeru. Kakeru was seven years old. Even in the sorrow of losing a child, the couple continued with their daily lives.

But the emptiness that suddenly returned, along with a grief too deep for words, was not something they could suppress through willpower alone. Otone persuaded her husband Kensuke, and they decided to "purchase" an AI humanoid robot. A company called REbirth was selling robots that were made to look exactly like real people and were trained using the dead person's photos and videos, along with their behavior and memories. In Japan alone, as many as 3,000 AI humanoid robot children were in operation. When the "robot Kakeru" arrived home by car, the couple was stunned by how much it resembled their son.

Otone tries to treat the robot Kakeru like her son. It activates when a button on the back of its neck is pressed, and it enters sleep mode on its own at night, but the robot Kakeru becomes a presence that fills her sense of loss. Even ordinary moments, like watching a child play at a playground, are recreated. On the surface, he seems to be recovering little by little. Kensuke, however, feels differently. To him, the robot Kakeru is little more than a Tamagotchi-like appliance. When the robot calls him "Dad," Kensuke replies indifferently, "I'm not your father, so you're not my son." He also tells it to call him "sir" instead of "dad."

Otone and the robot Kakeru try to adjust to their new life, even as her mother says, "You're still young. Just have another one," and her nieces and nephews awkwardly react as if a dead cousin has returned. Gradually, the robot Kakeru becomes the reason Otone feels she must keep living. But like a wave turning over, the calm slowly breaks. While the robot Kakeru is playing with human children at the playground, a man appears there, and Otone sees the robot and the man having a private conversation. Who exactly was that man? That is the setup for the film's opening section.

The reason the film is titled "Sheep in the Box" is closely tied to The Little Prince, the book Otone reads to the robot Kakeru in the film. In Antoine de Saint-Exupéry's The Little Prince, there is a passage in which, after the narrator's drawing of a sheep fails to satisfy the boy, he draws a box with holes in it. The line is, "The sheep you want is inside this box." That scene later leads to the story's key realization: "What is essential is invisible to the eye." Was it right for Otone to recreate her son Kakeru as a robot and place him before her? Would it have been better to keep him in the box of her heart and imagine her son as someone who had gone far away? Even while reading The Little Prince together, she seems unable to grasp the difference between what can be seen and what cannot. No matter how closely Otone examines the robot Kakeru's inner self with a flashlight and magnifying glass, her son Kakeru does not truly exist there. The film focuses precisely on that point. In particular, serious conflict begins to emerge among the three when the robot Kakeru reveals "memories of pain" that even the real Kakeru, while alive, did not know and could never have known.

The moment the identity of the man who appears at the playground is revealed, the robot Kakeru can no longer stand in for the son Kakeru. This is the film's biggest spoiler, so it cannot be explained in more detail, but it is also the point that clearly distinguishes the film from "A.I. Artificial Intelligence" 25 years ago.

In "A.I. Artificial Intelligence," the AI robot David acts as an individual. In "Sheep in the Box," however, the robot Kakeru is not an individual. At this point, the film raises a question: humans and robots can never be equal, but when people accept something, isn't the key the mindset of the one doing the accepting?

The two films are likely to be compared for a long time, especially because Steven Spielberg's "A.I. Artificial Intelligence" is remembered as a cruel variation on the Pinocchio fairy tale, while Hirokazu Kore-eda's "Sheep in the Box" offers a remarkable connection to the motif of The Little Prince.

Because it is a film about future technology, "Sheep in the Box" features several new inventions. The film opens with a drone delivery scene and includes robots that help young students get to school, as well as heart-shaped boxes from which light butterflies emerge when opened. It is also worth reflecting on Otone's profession as an architectural designer, along with the meaning of the Lemon Tree and the wooden blocks that appear in the film.

Hirokazu Kore-eda is already a master among masters and a winner of the Palme d'Or at Cannes. This year's appearance at Cannes is also his 10th time at the festival. Still, the local response to "Sheep in the Box" has been rather harsh. Screen Daily currently gives it 1.4 out of 4, placing it at the bottom of the rankings. The reason may be that the film's latter half packs in too many AI-related themes, causing its central message to become blurred. Even so, viewers who love Hirokazu Kore-eda will inevitably wonder what kind of "future human" he has imagined. The award results will be announced in the early hours of the 24th, Korea time.

This article has been translated by GripLabs Mingo AI.