Neo Sora Talks Political Divide in ‘Happyend’: ‘Japan Hasn’t Really Reflected on its Colonial Past’

variety.com:

Naman Ramachandran 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.