Happyend

Closing Night | West Coast Premiere with director Neo Sora, and producers Aiko Masubuchi and Albert Tholen in conversation with Kogonada

Sunday, April 6, 8:00 p.m. @ Vidiots The Eagle Theater (w/Q&A)

Director: Neo Sora
Japan/United States, 2024, 113 min, DCP

With graduation looming in near future Tokyo, two high school friends must reevaluate their friendship after pulling a consequential classroom prank. Coupled with the daily threat of a catastrophic earthquake, the friends are forced to reckon with their opposing visions of the future.

The first narrative feature from Japanese filmmaker Neo Sora announces a major new voice in international cinema: a richly textured and evocative depiction of youth culture in Japan that is also a head-on confrontation with some of our world’s most pressing contemporary anxieties. Set in a Tokyo high school in the near future, best friends and techno-music enthusiasts Yuta (Hayato Kurihara) and Kou (Yukito Hidaka) sneak out to raves and play sophisticated pranks on their principal, which results in their school installing a dystopian high-tech surveillance system. As their classmates adjust to an increasingly authoritarian reality – not to mention reports of an impending once-in-a-generation earthquake – the bonds of their friendship and political consciousness are tested. Avoiding didacticism or cliché, Sora’s film is an absorbing and humane depiction of Gen-Z coming-of-age, and among the few recent films that accurately captures how it feels to live in the world today.

Distributor: Metrograph Pictures

Language: Japanese w/English subtitles

Cast: Hayato Kurihara, Yukito Hidaka, Yuta Hayashi, Shina Peng, ARAZI, Kilala Inori, PUSHIM, Ayumu Nakajima, Makiko Watanabe
Writer: Neo Sora
Producers: Albert Tholen, Aiko Masubuchi, Alex Lo, Anthony Chen, Eric Nyari