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Metrograph Pictures has acquired the North American rights to Happyend, Neo Sora‘s dystopian feature that premiered at the recent Venice Film Festival. The film is also slated to be screened soon at festivals in Toronto, Busan, and New York.
Sora had previously directed Ryuichi Sakamoto/Opus, a film about his late father, the musician, which had also premiered at Venice. Another of Sora’s short films, The Chicken, debuted at several festivals, including Locarno and New York.
In announcing the acquisition, David Laub, the head of Metrograph Pictures, lauded Sora as “such an exciting new cinematic voice, and Happyend is a bold, unique, and deeply resonant film. It’s set in the near future but it’s really about our lives right now.”
Laub added that “Neo has crafted a moving and often humorous story of friendship and growing up set within a remarkably fresh and surprising world. We are thrilled to be
working with Neo and distributing this one-of-a-kind film.”
With its setting in a dystopian Tokyo of the near future, Happyend narrates the story of two high-school friends (played by Hayato Kurihara and Yukito Hidaka) who act out their anxieties over the threat of a catastrophic earthquake by playing pranks at their school. (Coincidentally, this week marks the 101st anniversary of the Great Kanto Earthquake of 1923 that leveled much of Tokyo.)
The schoolmates’ rebelliousness quickly leads to a crackdown by school authorities, who subject the students to surveillance cameras and other forms of social control. Then government authorities get in the act, spawning large-scale protests and unrest that further convince the students that government itself is a repressive institution.
Sora explained that he was inspired to make Happyend while “imagining what a near-future might look like, drawing parallels with Japan’s history of earthquakes unearthing social contradictions.” He added that “so much of this film comes from [my] own experiences growing up in New York, and the friendships that have been fundamental to my life.”
Reviewing the film in The Hollywood Reporter, David Rooney noted how it “captur[ed] that transitional moment when seemingly permanent adolescent ties suddenly appear uncertain.” Rooney wrote that “this is a melancholy drama laced with notes of anger and disquiet, but also resilience.”
Rooney added that “Sora strikes an expert tonal balance between the bittersweet, elegiac qualities of the end-of-school drama, with compassionate observation of the maturation process, and the volatile microcosm of an education institution that becomes like a prison, pointing to broader political implications in the outside world.”
Happyend will open in Japan on October 5.
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