Jenna Ortega hopes her new film, the dystopian sci-fi “Klara and the Sun,” can remind people to live in the moment in the age of AI and all-consuming technology.
“I think we need to focus on each other and ditch the computers and phones,” the star said. Variety on the red carpet at the film’s world premiere at the London Film Festival on Thursday evening.
Ortega, wearing a stunning yellow lace dress and hairpiece, added: “Remember to be present and appreciate people when they are standing right in front of you.”
Based on the 2021 bestselling novel of the same name by Nobel Prize winner Kazuo Ishiguro, “Klara and the Sun” is set in a future where advances in genetic engineering have divided humans into strict social classes. Ortega plays Klara, an artificial android companion purchased for a sick girl named Josie (Mia Tharia). “Klara and the Sun” is directed by “Thor” director Taika Waititi and also stars Amy Adams as Josie’s mother, Aran Murphy (son of Cillian Murphy), Natasha Lyonne, Steve Buscemi and more.
Waititi, Adams, Murphy and Lyonne all hit the red carpet at the London Film Festival on Thursday night, alongside Waititi’s wife Rita Ora, author Ishiguro and a surprise appearance from Florence Pugh, who stunned in a blue floral dress with statement sleeves. Pugh enthusiastically greeted Ortega and Adams before they all posed for photos together alongside producer Rachel Forman.
Florence Pugh, Amy Adams, Jenna Ortega and Rachel Forman at the world premiere of ‘Klara and the Sun’ in London.
Getty Images for BFI
Alongside Ortega, Adams added that everyone she spoke to took away “something different” from the film. “For me, it’s a really successful film that communicates something different to every viewer, so I love hearing what people get out of it,” she said.
Ortega clarified that although Klara is an “artificial friend,” she does not function like the AI we know today.
“I guess the AI gets all this information from the internet and Klara gets all her information from the real world,” she said. “So it’s a little different. She’s a little bit like a little girl in a sense. Playing her specifically in this film was really interesting because Taika wanted a more human approach, so he didn’t want to make movements that were too robotic, maybe more awkward and unconscious.”
Waititi echoed Ortega in saying the film’s message is to “put down the phone.”
“I just wish people would remember what friendship is and connect with people and just be,” he said. “Just be in the moment.”
Ishiguro acknowledged that, since the release of his novel in 2021, the world’s awareness and attitude towards AI has changed significantly.
“This movie doesn’t address a lot of the concerns that you and I may have right now about the future of technology. I mean, I think, rightly so, that it’s really center stage,” he said. “I’m aware that this movie takes place in a very different world than the one my novel came out in five years ago, and I don’t know how that’s going to change people’s expectations or the way they look at things. But I will say that it’s not another movie about how an AI machine appears to be nice, then turns sinister and ends up killing every nice person in the movie. It’s not that kind of story.”
Ishiguro is branching out further into cinema, confirming Variety that he is working on a new project with Tim Burton, for which he wrote an original screenplay. Although Burton and Ishiguro have a mutual friend in “Wednesday” star Ortega, he said she wasn’t the one who introduced them.
“I thought this was supposed to be a big secret!” » said Ishiguro. “No, Jenna didn’t introduce us. Tim lives near me in North London, and I was visiting him at his very strange and wacky and beautiful house. I mean, it looks like a Tim Burton set. And we started talking about a project and I wrote a custom script. We decided to do it privately between the two of us and then pitch it to people.”
He added that it was not a “war film”, adding: “In terms of genre, it’s very difficult to classify. It’s a Tim Burton film!”
“Klara and the Sun” is scheduled to hit theaters via Sony Pictures on October 23.
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