Screening on the Certain Regard program, Air Doll brings Japanese director Hirokazu Kore-eda to the Cannes Festival for the third time. He first attracted attention in 2001 with Distance, and in 2004 his feature Nobody Knows was the winner of the Best Actor award.

After Still Walking, recently released in France, Hirokazu Kore-eda continues his exploration of the mores of Japanese society. This time, however, the point of view is that of an inflatable doll, who suddenly takes on life as a social and sexual critic. "At first glance, this film appears to be a love story," Kore-eda comments. "However, the core issues I am dealing with are about human nature: can men ever fill up their own hollowness? What is the meaning of life? What is a human being? The film speaks of the loneliness of urban life, for both men and women."

This is the first time in his career that Hirokazu Kore-eda has shot a film that is an adaptation of another artist's work. In this case, he was inspired by a twenty-page manga drawn by Gouda Yoshiee. "The scene where the doll sheds a tear, deflates, and is reinflated by the man she loves," says the director, "seemed powerfully erotic to me. I also felt it had huge cinematographic potential, the idea is that air from another person could be a metaphor for sexuality. It was important to me to be able to explore my favorite themes through the eyes of the air doll… If my film is a circle, and I am in the center of the circle, I always try to expand it in all possible directions. I can go from concentrating on telling the story, to concentrating on the physical dimension of the human body, and so on. This film is the latest challenge I've given myself."