Hirokazu Kore-eda Brings a Humanoid Drama to Cannes Competition

Hirokazu Kore-eda's "Sheep in the Box" will world premiere in the Official Competition of the 79th Cannes Film Festival, which opens May 13, 2026. The film is a near future drama in which a bereaved couple takes in a state of the art humanoid as their son, placing artificial life at the center of a story otherwise in keeping with Kore-eda's focus on family and loss.

The Film

"Sheep in the Box" follows a grieving couple who accept a humanoid to fill the absence left by loss. The title comes from Antoine de Saint-Exupéry's "The Little Prince", in which the prince asks the narrator to draw him a sheep, and the narrator draws a box instead, with the sheep understood to be inside, invisible.

Kore-eda has described the project as science fiction in structure and intimate in subject. Haruka Ayase, one of Japan's most recognized dramatic actresses, stars alongside comedian and musician Daigo. Goodfellas handles international sales. Neon acquired distribution rights for the United States, United Kingdom, and Australia. Toho will release the film in Japan on May 29, 2026.

Kore-eda at Cannes

Kore-eda won the Palme d'Or in 2018 for "Shoplifters", a film about a family surviving on the margins of Japanese society through petty crime. It became the second Japanese film in 21 years to win the prize.

He served on the Cannes jury in 2014 and has returned to competition multiple times, including with "Broker" in 2022 and "The Truth" in 2019, the latter a French language production with Catherine Deneuve and Juliette Binoche. "Sheep in the Box" is his second 2026 release.

The Competition

The 79th Cannes competition lineup includes Asghar Farhadi, Pedro Almodóvar, Pawel Pawlikowski, and Ira Sachs, among others. The festival received 2,541 submissions from 141 countries for this edition. Park Chan-wook, director of "Oldboy", "The Handmaiden", and "Decision to Leave", serves as jury president.

The 79th edition's auteur slate follows a competition trend visible since 2024, when filmmaker Greta Gerwig led the jury. Major studio productions have receded; independent directors with strong festival histories dominate the selection.

AI on Screen in a Competition That Bans AI Production

The 79th Cannes competition officially bans generative AI from production. Films relying on generative models for scripts, performance synthesis, or primary visual content are ineligible for the Palme d'Or. "Sheep in the Box" was produced through conventional means. The humanoid it depicts is a narrative subject, not a production method.

The distinction separates subject matter from production tools, and Cannes has been clear that the ban addresses the latter. The same competition that bars AI filmmaking tools selected a film whose central figure is a being designed to pass as human. Jia Zhangke took the opposite route at Filmart 2026, using Seedance 2.0 to produce a short about authorship. Kore-eda uses traditional production to ask related questions through fiction.

International Release

Neon, the distributor behind "Anatomy of a Fall" and "Parasite" in North America, handled the acquisition before the Cannes selection was announced. The festival premiere will be the first public screening outside Japan.

The Toho release date of May 29 puts the film in Japanese cinemas days after the festival closes. Audiences in Japan will see "Sheep in the Box" without yet knowing whether it won any prizes. Filmmakers exploring similar questions about AI and human identity can try AI video generation in the workspace to prototype their own approaches.

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Sources

Variety | Deadline | The Hollywood Reporter | Screen Daily