By Variety | Created at 2025-03-15 02:56:07 | Updated at 2025-03-15 09:45:46
7 hours ago
In an post-screening Q&A ahead of the Asian Film Awards in Hong Kong, filmmaker Neo Sora discussed his nominated feature “Happyend,” a contemplative exploration of fractured friendship against the backdrop of political unrest in near-future Japan.
In the film, in near-future Tokyo, the threat of a catastrophic quake looms. Two friends, Yuta (Kurihara Hayato) and Korean-origin Kou (Hidaka Yukito), prank their principal before graduation, leading to school surveillance installation.
The Tokyo-based director’s debut feature film weaves personal relationships with larger sociopolitical themes, creating what Sora describes as “differences in scale” between intimate character dynamics and sweeping social commentary. “The core of the film is friendship, but specifically the feeling you get when you lose a friend because of political differences,” Sora explained. “That’s a really small thing because it’s just between you and somebody else. But because the reason is a larger, social reason, one of the most important things I was trying to do was suggest the grandness of scale through these small interactions.”
Working within budget constraints, Sora made strategic choices to amplify the film’s impact. A protest scene originally in the script was cut, which Sora believes strengthened the narrative by focusing exclusively on Yuta’s perspective after his friend Kou walks away to pursue political activism. “Kou suddenly has this world that is inaccessible to us, just like it’s inaccessible to Yuta,” Sora said. “Those kinds of realizations that maybe we’re actually living in different worlds now, even though our worlds were once the same – those are the things that lead to the end of their friendship.”
Set in a near-future where DJ culture has become somewhat antiquated and AI-generated music dominates, “Happyend” explores resistance to commercialization. The film opens with authorities shutting down an underground music venue. “The majority of people listen to music generated by AI, depending on what it makes you want to listen to,” Sora revealed about the film’s setting. “This population of DJs go against that. They’re like, ‘No, we want to choose what we listen to ourselves and discover the things that really resonate with us today from the past.'”
Sora uses this narrative framework to examine Japanese identity and xenophobia, topics he connects directly to historical amnesia. “Something that I really want to interrogate is what even is Japanese identity,” Sora said. “It’s very constructed. When I was thinking about the reasons why there’s so much xenophobia and racism within Japan, I kind of came to the conclusion, after research, that it’s due to the fact that Japan hasn’t really reflected on its colonial past.”
The filmmaker elaborated on post-WWII policies: “After Japan lost the war in World War Two, there came this question of what to do with all these people who were in the colonies, or who were from the colonies but moved to Japan. The Japanese government was actually quite scared of giving citizenship to these former Japanese people because if they gain citizenship, they can vote.”
Despite starting the screenplay eight years ago, Sora noted the film’s themes have only grown more relevant. “I wasn’t intentionally putting it out now for any reason,” he said. “It just takes time to develop, especially a first narrative feature film.”
The director also discussed his approach to specific technical elements, including a haunting, silent earthquake scene that was designed not to trigger audiences who had experienced actual seismic events.
When asked about low voter turnout among Japanese youth versus the film’s focus on protests, Sora highlighted that one main character, Kou, lacks voting rights due to his Korean citizenship. “I don’t necessarily think voting is the be-all, end-all in political engagement and action,” Sora added. “Assembling on the streets, assembling in public, actually is maybe the highest form of democratic action you can possibly do.”
“Happyend” is nominated in the best new director and best newcomer (Kurihara) categories at this year’s Asian Film Awards, with winners to be announced Sunday night in Hong Kong. The film debuted at Venice and has won awards at Golden Horse and Goteborg.
