Coolly compelling and disturbingly plausible, Neo Sora's debut feature is a dystopian teen drama where surveillance, friendship, and political truth collide in near-future Tokyo.
Sora’s deft cocktail of teen angst and invasive technology... feels ripped from both today’s headlines and the pages of a bestselling manga.
Happyend 2024
“Few narrative debuts feel as self-assured as Neo Sora’s Happyend. While it’s a high-school coming-of-age drama set in the near future, it’s similarly steeped in looming anxieties about what comes next.
Sora’s richly conceived teen characters exist on the precipice of adulthood... After a practical joke aimed at the wealthy, possibly corrupt principal is branded an act of terrorism, a state-of-the-art surveillance system is installed, forcing an uneasy magnification of the students’ backgrounds.
Sora establishes the dramatic parameters of his totalitarian world: a quietly dystopian Tokyo in which everything from advertisements projected on clouds to casual racism is widely accepted. There’s a nihilistic streak... between the menace of natural disaster and the welcomed authoritarianism of their principal.
Two stories play out in parallel: the student body’s reaction to surveillance and shifting dynamics within the friend group. Sora’s methodical visual approach allows not just observation, but rumination... As the characters gradually recognize and oppose these forces, affection and mutual understanding begin to guide the movie’s moral compass.” — Siddhant Adlakha, Joysauce.com