After Yang

After Yang is a 2021 American science fiction drama film written, directed, and edited by Kogonada. It stars Colin Farrell, Jodie Turner-Smith, Justin H. Min, Malea Emma Tjandrawidjaja, and Haley Lu Richardson. The plot follows a family's attempts to repair their unresponsive robotic child. The film had its world premiere at the Cannes Film Festival on July 8, 2021, and was released on March 4, 2022, by A24 and Showtime. It received generally positive reviews from critics. It, along with Hirokazu Kore-eda’s Monster, are the final feature films scored by composer Ryuichi Sakamoto prior to his death. Since its release, it has been cited as among the best films of the 2020s and the 21st century. Plot Jake and Kyra live with their adoptive daughter Mika, as well as Yang, a robotic teenage boy. Jake and Kyra bought Yang, a culture unit, as a way for Mika to connect with her Chinese heritage through sharing stories and facts. Yang becomes unresponsive one day after a family dance competition, but he is no longer under warranty because they purchased him from defunct reseller Second Siblings instead of his original manufacturer, Brothers & Sisters Incorporated. Jake, whose tea shop is struggling, seeks an affordable way to repair Yang. A local repair store, Quick Fix, runs a diagnostic and finds that Yang's computing core has malfunctioned and needs to be replaced. The technician recommends replacing Yang with an entirely new unit before his body begins to decompose, at a substantial cost. However, as Jake realizes how upset Mika is at the loss of her "brother", he becomes determined to save Yang out of principle, despite Kyra's suggestion that Mika could benefit from experiencing grief. In a flashback, Yang reassures a curious Mika that she is still part of the family despite being adopted. At the advice of his neighbor, George, Jake takes Yang to Russ, a backstreet technician. He offers to perform an illegal repair of Yang's core against the terms of Brothers & Sisters' user agreement. Russ discovers what he believes to be a hidden camera inside of Yang. Jake takes the "camera" to a museum specialist named Cleo, who tells him that it is, in fact, Yang's memory bank—a device that records each unit's key experiences, which Brothers & Sisters has long denied exists in order to avoid a privacy scandal. Jake watches Yang's "memories", short clips from every day of his life, many of which feature an unknown young blonde woman.