Oscar winner Taika Waititi brought his adaptation of Kazuo Ishiguro’s Klara and the Sun, with Jenna Ortega and Amy Adams, to a London Film Festival gala at the Royal Festival Hall.
Taika Waititi, the Oscar-winning writer of Jojo Rabbit, brought Klara and the Sun to the Royal Festival Hall on the South Bank on Thursday 15 October 2026. Jenna Ortega and Amy Adams lead the cast.
Waititi was born Taika David Cohen in Wellington in 1975 and studied theatre at Victoria University of Wellington. With Jemaine Clement, as The Humourbeasts, he won New Zealand’s Billy T Award in 1999.
Boy and Hunt for the Wilderpeople each became the top-grossing film made entirely in New Zealand. He went on to direct Thor: Ragnarok in 2017.
Waititi adapted Kazuo Ishiguro’s novel. Ortega plays Klara, an artificial friend chosen by a girl named Josie to bring joy into her life. Josie’s condition and her domineering mother, played by Adams, complicate the task.
The screening was the film’s UK premiere, a London Film Festival gala. Sony Pictures Releasing brings it to British cinemas.
Mia Tharia, Steve Buscemi and Natasha Lyonne complete the cast.