Movie
Klara and the Sun
Cultural messages
What Makes Us Human?
highKlara is a non-human android who displays empathy, self-sacrifice, and contentment that exceed the humans around her. The film explicitly meditates on whether she possesses 'something indistinguishable from a soul.' She makes a self-damaging sacrifice to save Josie, blurring the line between programmed loyalty and genuine love. Her dignified acceptance of obsolescence and discard by the humans she served positions her as more 'human' than her owners — the film's central philosophical reckoning with what humanity means.
About this message: As the line between humans and non-humans blurs — AI, clones, aliens, robots — the story forces a reckoning with what truly defines humanity: biology, consciousness, memory, emotion, or moral choice.
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Full plot (spoilers)
Set in a near-future suburb where genetic engineering has divided society into strict social classes, the film follows Klara, an Artificial Friend (AF) — a sophisticated companion android — who is purchased from a store by Josie, a bright but ailing teenage girl. Children in this world who have been genetically 'lifted' for academic advantage often study in isolation at home, and AFs are sold to keep them company. Klara is solar-powered and develops an almost religious reverence for the Sun, coming to regard it as a benevolent deity capable of healing.
Josie's mother Chrissie (Amy Adams) is overprotective and carries unresolved grief from the loss of a younger daughter. When Klara enters the household, her innocent observational intelligence and deep loyalty begin to stir the family's emotional wounds. Klara and Josie form an immediate, intense bond, though that closeness unsettles Chrissie. Over time, Klara's relationship with Chrissie becomes the film's most emotionally weighty thread, as the android's guileless affection forces the grieving mother to confront what she has lost and what she fears losing again.
Josie's health deteriorates — her illness implicitly linked to the consequences of her genetic lifting. Convinced that sunlight holds the power to heal Josie, Klara identifies a Cootings Machine (a pollution-generating device) as the source of the light-blocking contamination harming her. In an act of self-sacrificial faith, Klara destroys the machine, sustaining significant damage to herself in the process. Sunlight eventually floods Josie's room, and the girl's health begins to recover — though the film leaves deliberately ambiguous whether the Sun truly intervened or the recovery is coincidental.
As Josie grows healthier and eventually leaves for college, Klara becomes obsolete. She is taken to a yard of discarded machines, her purpose exhausted. Yet in her final reflections, Klara expresses not bitterness but quiet contentment — glad for the life she experienced, the bonds she formed, and the love she gave. The ending is elegiac: an android shown to possess something indistinguishable from a soul is ultimately discarded by the humans she served, embodying the film's central meditation on what genuine friendship and love mean when one party is designed to be replaceable.
Sources: Wikipedia, noscriptneeded.com, Flickering Myth (BFI London Film Festival review), Infinite Brief