Happyend

Tokyo in the near future. Yuta and Kou have been friends since childhood and are in their last year at school; they make music, wander the building at night, and one night play a prank with the principal's car. In response the school installs an AI surveillance system throughout: the cameras recognise the students, assign behaviour scores, and the punishment arrives automatically. Yuta does not take it seriously. Kou is of Korean descent and the system does not treat him the same way; their paths begin to separate. Neo Sora writes and directs in his first fiction feature. Two things sit behind the narrative: the large earthquake Japan expects, and emergency legislation. The film does not use them as disaster material; the earthquake alerts are part of daily life and the threat is constant and never arrives. The subject is how surveillance separates people. Two boys doing the same thing at the same school do not get the same result, and Kou being a Zainichi Korean decides it; that community has lived in Japan for generations and its legal position is still distinct. Neo Sora is the son of the musician Ryuichi Sakamoto and had made a concert film about his father; this is his first fiction. It screened in the Horizons section of the 2024 Venice film festival. Who it is for: viewers who like political youth drama and near future narratives. Who it is not for: the pace is slow, little happens, and the film prefers to imply its subject rather than state it.