Legendary Japanese director Hirokazu Kore-eda has become a mainstay of the Cannes Film Festival . His newest film, Sheep in the Box , a sci-fi tale about a couple who adopt a humanoid robot after the death of their son, will be his eighth film to play in competition. The Toyko-born Kore-eda served on the jury, headed by Greta Gerwig, two years ago, and before that, his film Shoplifters won the Palme d’Or in 2018 and went on to earn an Oscar nomination for best foreign-language film. But while a lot of promise surrounded Kore-eda when he was first called to Cannes in 2001 with his film Distance , that invitation might have been premature, and his later success could not have been predicted. In Filmmaker Magazine , Noah Cowan wrote, “I am a big fan of Hirokazu Kore-eda’s Distance .…