In the distant future, a couple must come to terms with the loss of the eldest child, actually an A.I. purchased as an ethnically programmed companion for their adopted South East Asian daughter – SF mystery drama is on Sky Cinema from Thursday, September 22nd Memory is one of the great themes of cinema because when you point a moving image camera at someone, you capture and preserve their moving image for posterity. Or even if you write down their words on paper, a simpler, more primitive form of recording.) Memory is also one of the elements which defines us as human beings. As described in the parlance of the distant future world in which this is set, Yang is a technosapien (i.e. a robot), a purchased elder sibling of a family comprising father Jake (Colin Farrell), mother Kyra (Jodie Turner-Smith) and daughter Mika (Malea Emma Tjandrawidjaja). Mika is adopted, and her ever so Hollywood liberal parents – he a white man who has built a business around his passion for tea, she a black woman who is a hard-working, highly motivated high-flier in a demanding corporate business that's never really defined – are concerned that she connect with her South East Asian heritage.

Kogonada's enigmatic sci-fi drama channels Charlie Kaufman and Philip K Dick as Colin Farrell and Jodie Turner Smith try to fix the faulty AI bot they bought for their adopted daughter After Yang is an enigmatic sci-fi drama about a family of the future whose AI robot child (a "techno-sapien") bought by the parents to be a kindly big brother to their adopted Chinese daughter, goes wrong and cannot be fixed. There are touches of Philip K Dick and even Charlie Kaufman, and this is also a pregnant meditation on grief, loss, memory and consciousness. Colin Farrell and Jodie Turner-Smith play Jake and Kyra, who have an adopted daughter Mika (Malea Emma Tjandrawidjaja) – and also AI bot Yang (Justin H Min), a happy, calm, friendly and very lovable figure of Chinese appearance, programmed with Chinese memories and Chinese knowledge, whom the family has grown to love. When Yang goes into an unexplained coma, it is deeply upsetting: a bereavement-shock far beyond the malfunction of some gadget. Yang was bought secondhand, without guarantee, so Jake is forced to take him to a rackety backstreet repairman who reveals that Yang had been implanted with spyware designed to harvest consumer data, but also that much of Yang's memory had been recorded.

This entirely absorbing movie from Korean-American director Kogonada is adapted from a short story by Alexander Weinstein in his collection Children of the New World; it floats on a Zen updraft of wisdom and ideas. After Yang is an enigmatic sci-fi drama about a family of the future whose AI robot child (a "techno-sapien") bought by the parents to be a kindly big brother to their adopted Chinese daughter, goes wrong and cannot be fixed. There are touches of Philip K Dick and even Charlie Kaufman, and this is also a pregnant meditation on grief, loss, memory and consciousness. Colin Farrell and Jodie Turner-Smith play Jake and Kyra, who have an adopted daughter Mika (Malea Emma Tjandrawidjaja) – and also AI bot Yang (Justin H Min), a happy, calm, friendly and very lovable figure of Chinese appearance, programmed with Chinese memories and Chinese knowledge, whom the family has grown to love. When Yang goes into an unexplained coma, it is deeply upsetting: a bereavement-shock far beyond the malfunction of some gadget.

Someone at a robot company once told me a story about one of its bomb disposal machines. The soldiers who had been using the robot in Afghanistan were dismayed after it returned from repairs. They said that the robot's shiny new parts and casing--lacking the bullet holes and blast scars they knew--made it seem as if the machine itself had, in a sense, died. It might seem odd, grieving a robot. But for anyone who's seen After Yang, the beautiful and strange new movie by the South Korean filmmaker Kogonada, it won't.

Comparisons between Kogonada's new film, "After Yang," and his earlier one, "Columbus," are inevitable, and their differences obscure the big idea that unites them. "After Yang" is a science-fiction film, set in a vague future time at an unspecified place, seemingly in the United States; its title character is an android, or "technosapien." "Columbus," his first feature, from 2017, is set in its own present day, in the real-life city of Columbus, Indiana, and centered on a young woman played by Haley Lu Richardson. "After Yang" is a synthetic work of dystopian imagination, and "Columbus" is a carefully realistic view of its place and time. Nonetheless, the two films are propelled by the same impulse: the artistic basis of mental life, the politics of aesthetics.

In the film After Yang, a father goes to great lengths to save his daughter's best friend. It just so happens this bestie is a humanoid robot, or technosapien, named Yang. Can he be easily replaced, and what's the value of his artificial life? Like a cross between Black Mirror and Spike Jonze's Her, After Yang explores humanity and existence through the lens of technology, while director Kogonada (Columbus) crafts a vision of the future that feels truly distinct. After a virtuoso opening sequence, where families compete in a virtual dance contest in their living rooms, Yang (Justin H. Min) malfunctions. He's not just some robotic butler; he's a culture technosapien meant to help Jake's adoptive daughter, Mika (Malea Emma Tjandrawidjaja), learn about her Chinese heritage.