Jenna Ortega has spent the last few years playing the kind of characters who keep the world at arm’s length, so it is a real turn to see her step into the shoes of someone who wants nothing more than to be loved. The first trailer for Klara and the Sun arrived today, and it introduces her as Klara, an Artificial Friend built to keep a lonely child company. Sony Pictures released the footage, with the studio promising a theatrical release on October 23.
The movie comes from director Taika Waititi, who adapted Kazuo Ishiguro’s 2021 novel of the same name alongside co-writer Dahvi Waller. Ishiguro won the Nobel Prize, and his book landed as a bestseller, telling its story through the eyes of an artificial companion who watches the human world with wide-eyed wonder. If you know Waititi mostly for his comedies, this is a different kind of project for him. He has called it his most dramatic film yet, and the trailer backs that up. There is warmth here, but there is also a quiet ache running underneath all of it.
The setup is simple enough to follow. Klara is a solar-powered robot designed to ease loneliness, and she sits in a store waiting to be chosen, hoping the right family will come along and take her home. That family arrives in the form of Josie, a young girl played by Mia Tharia, and the two of them form an immediate bond. Josie is dealing with a serious illness and a complicated relationship with her mother, played by Amy Adams. Klara, for her part, brings a kind of pure devotion to the household, and she becomes convinced that the sun itself might hold the answer to healing the people she has come to love.
What makes the trailer land is the way it leans into Klara’s innocence. She describes herself and others like her as blank slates who arrive with the intelligence of a toddler and learn everything from the humans around them. That childlike quality runs through the whole thing, which makes the darker turns hit harder. Adams’ character reminds Klara that she is still under warranty and can always be sent back, a line that lands with a chill precisely because Klara takes it so earnestly. The second half of the footage hints that the family is carrying secrets, and that the bright, hopeful surface of this world has shadows underneath.
The supporting cast is stacked with talent. Natasha Lyonne shows up as a store manager who encourages Klara and the other older models to keep believing they can find homes, even as newer technology threatens to make them obsolete. Steve Buscemi appears as well, along with Aran Murphy, the son of Cillian Murphy. It is the kind of ensemble that suggests everyone involved believed in the material.
For Ortega, this feels like a deliberate move to show audiences something new. She built her reputation on characters who are sharp and guarded, and Klara is the opposite of all that, an open and trusting presence who simply wants to belong. Waititi has spoken about being drawn to Ortega precisely because she struck him as advanced and intelligent, and that intelligence reads on screen even when she is playing someone learning the world from scratch.
Klara and the Sun reaches theaters on October 23. Watch the trailer below.
