Family Romance is a Tokyo-based company that offers the perfect stand-ins for absent family, friends or admirers – available to rent for any occasion. In a fictionalised take on this real-life company, Herzog follows founder Yuichi Ishii as he helps his clients make their dreams come true. But when the mother of 12-year-old Mahiro hires Ishii to impersonate her missing ex-husband, the line between performance and reality threatens to blur. 

Shot by Herzog himself, the film blends fiction storytelling with documentary-style visuals for a striking meditation on truth and artifice in the age of loneliness.