Who is Hikari, the Japanese director behind Beef and Brendan Fraser-starrer Rental Family?
The filmmaker talks about her journey from Osaka to Hollywood and how her new film with Fraser as a fake dad was inspired by her childhood
There is a mild, modest satisfaction when we ask Hikari how she feels about her career to date. “So far, so good,” she says briskly. It is a little more than that.
Now comes her second feature-length movie, Rental Family, a gentle, sometimes mournful Tokyo-set comedy that strikes a contemporary nerve. The film made its theatrical debut in Japan on February 27, following its successful North American roll-out in late 2025.
It stars Oscar winner Brendan Fraser as Phillip, an out-of-work American actor living in Tokyo who finds gainful employment when he joins a “rental family” agency.
The film taps into a real-life phenomenon of agencies that supply temporary surrogates to those in need, with actors playing stand-in lovers, family members, colleagues or whatever the client may require.
Hikari and her co-writer Stephen Blahut met real “rental family” workers as part of their research and discovered just why there is a demand for such services.