RENTAL FAMILY

Already a hit in the US and Europe, Rental Family finally opens nationwide on February 27, with its principal Tokyo engagement at Toho Cinemas Hibiya. To our surprise, select shows will feature both English and Japanese subtitles—an uncommon but welcome format that allows international and Japanese audiences to experience the film together. Directed by Japan-born, LA-based Hikari (37 Seconds, Beef), the film stars Brendan Fraser in his first major role since winning the Academy Award for The Whale. You won’t want to miss this warm, feel-good ode to the makeshift families we create to get by.

Fraser plays Phillip, an American actor now living quietly in Tokyo. Adrift professionally and personally, he accepts work at a “rental family” agency and is soon performing as a substitute father, husband, or companion for clients in need of connection. But as Philip inhabits other people’s domestic fictions, the boundaries between role and reality blur, forcing him to confront his own loneliness and unresolved past.

Avoiding caricature and cultural spectacle, Hikari approaches Japan’s rental-service phenomenon with restraint and empathy, framing it not as novelty but as a prism for examining isolation and the fragile architecture of belonging.

Fraser is joined by the bilingual Takehiro Hira and Mari Yamamoto (both stars of Monarch: Legacy of Monsters), who play his boss and colleague, respectively; as well as the legendary Akira Emoto, as a seemingly senile man who enlists Phillip in abetting his secret journey back to his hometown.

Rental Family often plays situations for laughs, but when it presents Phillip with moral quandaries, it’s at its most emotionally resonant.

Theaters showing this film

From Feb. 27, 2026

• Toho Cinemas Hibiya
• Toho Cinemas Roppongi Hills
• Toho Cinemas Umeda
• Cinema Rycom
• Lawson United Cinema Parco City Urasoe
• Yokohama Burg 13

March 7 and 8, 2026

• Shinjuku Piccadilly
• Midland Square Cinema
• Movix Kyoto
• Sapporo Cinema Frontier
• Movix Saitama

March 8 and 9, 2026

• Forum Morioka
• Forum Yamagata
• Forum Fukushima