Rental Family
An unconventional and endearing crowd-pleaser.
Philip (Brendan Fraser) is a struggling American actor living in Tokyo, searching for human connection. After bouncing from audition to audition, he finds a calling when Shinji Tada (Takehiro Hira), the owner of a small role-playing firm called Rental Family, hires him to play the token white guy in the many real-life scenarios their lonely clients need fulfilled. In a role requiring far less artifice than his physically transformative Oscar-winning performance in “The Whale”, Fraser puts a face to forlornness in an unconventional, endearing crowd-pleaser.
Robert Daniels, Screen Daily
Hikari (1977) is a Japanese writer, director, and producer. She moved to the U.S. as an exchange student at age 17 and earned a BA degree in Theatre Arts, Dance, and Fine Arts from Southern Utah University in 1999. Later she obtained an MFA in Film & TV Production from the USC School of Cinematic Arts in 2011. Her early work includes the award-winning short film “Tsuyako” (2011), which was her USC thesis film and played at over 100 festivals worldwide, winning around 50 awards. In 2013, she wrote and directed the short film, “A Better Tomorrow”, which premiered at the Cannes Film Festival. Her short “Where We Begin” (2015) premiered at Tribeca. Her feature debut “37 Seconds” (2019) premiered at the Berlin International Film Festival, claiming two awards in the Panorama section. She has also directed episodes of the Netflix series “Beef” (2023).
Filmography:
37 Seconds (2019), Rental Family (2025)