On the surface, Kakeru is a perfect physical replica of the son Otone and Kensuke lost, but the limitations of the technology underscore the gap between the son they’ve lost and the one they now have.

Kore-eda (Cannes Palme d’Or winner with ‘Shoplifters’) has always been a humanist filmmaker, one who has no naïveté about our capacity for destruction, even as he celebrates the ways people, despite their own self-interests, can sacrifice and care for each other.

Here, he offers a new way to rethink holding on to grief, resulting in a wistful poem of a movie.