Sony Pictures has released the official trailer for Klara and the Sun, an emotional science-fiction drama starring Jenna Ortega as an artificial companion created to ease human loneliness.
Set in the near future, the film introduces Klara, an Artificial Friend waiting to be chosen by a human family. Her life changes when she meets Josie, a teenage girl played by Mia Tharia. The two immediately recognise something familiar in one another, beginning a friendship that will transform both of their lives.
Josie lives with her mother Chrissie, portrayed by Amy Adams, and their relationship has been shaped by grief, illness and painful family loss. As Klara becomes part of their home, her curiosity, loyalty and innocent view of humanity gradually bring hope back into Josie’s complicated world.
The trailer also reveals Klara’s unusual relationship with the sun, which provides her with energy and becomes central to her attempt to help Josie. Convinced that the sun possesses a healing power, Klara sets out to protect her friend with a devotion that appears far more profound than anyone expected from a machine.
Jenna Ortega’s warm and optimistic performance marks a considerable departure from the darker characters for which she has recently become known. Rather than presenting Klara as an emotionless robot, the film gives her a childlike sense of wonder as she studies human behaviour and attempts to understand love, sacrifice and belonging.
The film is written and directed by Taika Waititi, working from Kazuo Ishiguro’s bestselling 2021 novel and a screenplay co-written with Dahvi Waller. Waititi has described the project as one of his most dramatic films, combining moments of humour with the novel’s meditative exploration of loneliness, spirituality and what it means to be human.
Alongside Ortega, Adams and Tharia, the cast includes Natasha Lyonne, Steve Buscemi and Aran Murphy. The production was filmed in New Zealand and presents a stylised retro-futuristic society in which advanced technology exists beside an increasingly isolated human population.
With its colourful visual style and deeply emotional premise, Klara and the Sun appears less interested in portraying artificial intelligence as a threat than in asking whether love, faith and loyalty truly belong only to humans.
Klara and the Sun is currently scheduled to arrive exclusively in US cinemas on 23 October 2026.
