In a Japanese city of the near future, reminiscent of Tokyo, there is a constant sense of seismic instability. Against a backdrop of earthquake warning signals and mounting tension, a group of teenage friends navigates their personal coming-of-age stories.

After the students play a prank on the principal, a system of total video surveillance is introduced at the school. It records and evaluates the students’ behavior, deducting points for even the slightest infractions. But while everyday life in the city becomes more controlled, the teenagers’ rebellious energy and their love of music create bursts of vitality and defiance.

Visually, Sora’s city of the future does not present a radically transformed technopolis in the spirit of classic science fiction, such as Los Angeles in *Blade Runner*. In Happyend, the city remains recognizable, close to today’s Tokyo: its architecture and everyday spaces are almost indistinguishable from reality.

Elements of the future appear more as subtle interventions in the visual environment, with digital layers woven into everyday life: news feeds appearing in the clouds above the city, or numerical indicators marking the characters as subjects of surveillance. These elements do not dominate but coexist with reality. Here, the authoritarian future does not look like a radically different world, but rather like a slightly shifted version of the present.

Happyend is the first feature film by Neo Sora, an American director of Japanese descent. The film premiered at the Venice Film Festival in 2024.

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