There’s no shortage of AI anxiety in contemporary culture, but “Klara And The Sun” looks to approach the subject from a more tender, melancholy place. TriStar Pictures has released a new trailer for Taika Waititi’s upcoming adaptation of Kazuo Ishiguro’s 2021 novel, with Jenna Ortega starring as Klara, an Artificial Friend purchased to become a companion for a young girl.
The film centers on Klara, a solar-powered android whose purpose is to help ease human loneliness. After she is brought home by a mother played by Amy Adams, Klara becomes deeply attached to the family’s daughter, Josie, played by Mia Tharia, and begins to believe the sun may hold the key to helping them. Natasha Lyonne and Steve Buscemi also star.
Waititi directs from a screenplay he co-wrote with Dahvi Waller, adapting Ishiguro’s acclaimed novel about love, loneliness, artificial intelligence, and the fragile line between programming and feeling. The filmmaker has described the movie as one of his most dramatic projects to date, a shift away from the broader comic register of films like “Thor: Ragnarok” and “Jojo Rabbit.”
Ortega, meanwhile, steps into a very different mode from “Wednesday,” playing a character defined less by deadpan gloom than curiosity, devotion, and wonder. Given the current cultural fixation on AI, “Klara And The Sun” arrives with an especially timely question at its center: what does love mean when it may not be entirely human?
“Klara And The Sun” opens in theaters on October 23 via Sony Pictures. Watch the first trailer below.
