{"id":32971,"date":"2026-03-02T21:16:39","date_gmt":"2026-03-02T13:16:39","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/sgbuzz.com\/?p=32971"},"modified":"2026-03-02T21:16:39","modified_gmt":"2026-03-02T13:16:39","slug":"who-is-hikari-the-japanese-director-behind-beef-and-brendan-fraser-starrer-rental-family","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/sgbuzz.com\/?p=32971","title":{"rendered":"Who is Hikari, the Japanese director behind Beef and Brendan Fraser-starrer Rental Family?"},"content":{"rendered":"


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There is a mild, modest satisfaction when we ask Hikari how she feels about her career to date. \u201cSo far, so good,\u201d she says briskly. It is a little more than that.<\/p>\n

The Japanese-born director established her art-house credentials in 2019 with her prize-winning feature debut 37 Seconds<\/em>. She went on to direct episodes of prestige American TV, including the water-cooler show Beef<\/em><\/span>.<\/div>\n

Now comes her second feature-length movie, Rental Family<\/em>, 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.<\/p>\n

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 \u201crental family\u201d agency.<\/p>\n

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.<\/p>\n

Hikari and her co-writer Stephen Blahut met real \u201crental family\u201d workers as part of their research and discovered just why there is a demand for such services.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n


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There is a mild, modest satisfaction when we ask Hikari how she feels about her career to date. \u201cSo far, so good,\u201d she says briskly….<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":32972,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"fifu_image_url":"","fifu_image_alt":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[33],"tags":[283,17043,2626,238,17044,17042,1884,14816],"class_list":["post-32971","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-bored-interesting","tag-beef","tag-brendan","tag-director","tag-family","tag-fraserstarrer","tag-hikari","tag-japanese","tag-rental","wpcat-33-id"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/sgbuzz.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/32971","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/sgbuzz.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/sgbuzz.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sgbuzz.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sgbuzz.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=32971"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/sgbuzz.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/32971\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sgbuzz.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/32972"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/sgbuzz.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=32971"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sgbuzz.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=32971"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sgbuzz.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=32971"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}