Please note: This was screened in Sept 2024
Kogonada followed up his thoughtful debut feature Columbus (2017) by pivoting away from drama grounded in the present day to this enigmatic sci-fi vision of future America, based on a short story by Alexander Weinstein, and channelling Philip K Dick.
A suburban couple (Jodie Turner-Smith and Colin Farrell) are raising their young daughter Mika (Malea Emma Tjandrawidjaja) with the help of an android named Yang (Justin H. Min). Having adopted Mika from China, the couple purchased Yang – ‘a cultural techno’ – to play the role of a big brother, and give Mika a grounding in the culture of her native country.
But when Yang malfunctions, Jake (Farrell) must search for a way to repair him.
'The action of After Yang, bizarre and exotic as it is, meditates on what it is to be human and how that may in the future be modified, but it also addresses loss in the present day: our anguished and futile human instinct that death must surely be fixable.’ - Peter Bradshaw, The Guardian