Director Hikari on the Audience Reception to ‘Rental Family’: ‘We Already Won’

The "Rental Family" writer/director talks to IndieWire about why she cast Brendan Fraser in her Japan-set film, and what it's like "seeing how connected the audiences are all around the world" to it.

Director Hikari feels grateful, in more ways than one, for recent Oscar winner Brendan Fraser agreeing to star in “Rental Family,” her sophomore feature. “He was very careful with what he was going to choose. I think he got 70 scripts sent his way after winning the Oscar,” said the filmmaker to IndieWire during an interview at the 2025 Middleburg Film Festival.

As she was becoming a rising star in TV directing, having worked on the Michael Mann-produced “Tokyo Vice,” and Emmy winner “Beef,” Hikari had invested years in developing the “Rental Family” script with co-writer Stephen Blahut. The pair had initially envisioned their protagonist Phillip, an expat actor whose career has waned, to the point where he takes a job playing stand-in roles for strangers, as younger, but right as she began thinking “an older gentleman felt a little bit more lonely in a way that it felt right. That’s when I went to see ‘The Whale,’ during the BAFTA screening in California,” said the director.

Fraser, Zooming into the theater, with his face taking up 30 feet of the screen, had been a revelation. “When I saw him I just felt, ‘Oh, there’s my Philip,” she said. “He’s such a kind soul.”

Empathy is a big theme in the film, as the concept of rental families, where people can hire actors who will do anything for them, such as pose as a journalist in order to keep an elderly filmmaker occupied and important, or pretend to be the father of a young girl in order to help her single mother get her into an elite school, stems from the different relationship Japanese people have with mental health issues.

“Mental health is very challenging and it’s not really accessible for a lot of people in Japan. So therefore this business exists,” said Hikari, who was born and raised in Osaka. “There’s a word called ‘honne,’ which is a true feeling and ‘honne’ is a thought. So we were taught not to show your true emotions but always keep it [inside] to create harmony. Because we’re a village culture. And you don’t want to be outspoken, you just always have to stay in place.”

The writer/director came upon a different understanding of relationships and communities as a foreign exchange student studying in Utah toward the end of high school. “What I experienced back then, the people I’m still good friends with to this day, is a really great example of how family can be found anywhere,” she said. That experience is what had sparked the question that gave “Rental Family” life: “Even though you’re the only one in the room, what kind of connections and friendship can we create?”

Fish-out-of-water stories are common enough in cinema to where the ones set in Japan could be their own subgenre, but they often read in a gawkier, more judgmental way. “Rental Family” flips the script on Hikari’s personal cross-cultural experience to bring her newly American perspective to the setting of her native country. In that respect, though “Rental Family” centers on a white American man, the director emphasizes “He’s not a white savior. He’s so on the ground, on the bottom.” 

Ultimately, the role of Phillip was open to anyone, as long as they were not Japanese, as Hikari worried a version of the film with all locals could affect the scope of its appeal. “Whatever it takes to go outside of Japan, I’m all for it,” she said. “If Phillip was a Japanese guy, we are going to watch a Japanese movie. And because Phillip is Caucasian, a lot of people outside of Japan can relate to him, regardless of if they’re a woman or not, because you are the token white — the only one in Japan. So, I really want to give that experience to the audience, so they can just follow his footsteps all the way throughout the movie,” said Hikari. “What’s important for me is that no matter what nationality we are, what we look like, we can be family and we can create love, we can create friendship.”

Even behind the scenes, Fraser became a huge part of establishing that ethos. “He’s always careful. He’s constantly talking to people who are just the PAs. And walking on set from the car to wherever he goes, he says hi to everybody. And when he leaves he says thank you to every single person, that’s who he is,” said the director. 

“Rental Family” would go on to win the Audience Award at Middleburg, as it would at several other festivals like the Chicago International Film Festival and the Woodstock Film Festival, garnering it some awards attention. But Hikari’s approach to Oscars season has been to remind herself, “We made something very special, and that energy just needs to stay positive. It’s all energy in my mind,” she said. “Making this movie and getting this much praise or love from the audience, we already won. I already won the prize by just seeing how connected the audiences are all around the world.”

While any nominations would be great, the director said “it’s more important that I get to talk to the audience about my experience because that experience, if they hear it, they’re going to see it from a different point of view.” At Middleburg, after receiving a standing ovation, Hikari ended the “Rental Family” screening telling them to “go home and call your people you love. Make sure you connect with them” because “Family is something that we create.” If there is one takeaway from the film, let it be “Community: come together, that’s how we create our beautiful life,” she said.

Next up: One of the projects Hikari is developing is the inverse of “Rental Family,” titled “Made in Utah,” which would be a TV series more directly representing her experience coming to America as an exchange student, and “living in Utah with a very dysfunctional Mormon family,” she said. The show has Annapurna as a producer, but is still finding a network home. She and Blahut are also writing a female samurai film, based on a true story.

“Rental Family,” a Searchlight Pictures release, is now available on PVOD.