Metrograph Pictures has snapped up North American distribution rights to Japanese director Neo Sora’s fictional feature debut Happyend, a high school delinquent drama with shades of political dystopia. The film has proved a hit with critics at the Venice Film Festival, where it premiered earlier this week in the event’s Horizons section.
Following its debut in Venice, Happyend is next headed to the Toronto International Film Festival, Busan International Film Festival, and New York Film Festival. Monograph says it will release the film in U.S. cinemas sometime next year. Outside the U.S., the title is represented by sales outfit Magnify.
Happyend is Sora’s first fictional feature but he was in Venice last year with the documentary, Opus, which captured the final performance of his late father, Japanese musical icon Ryuichi Sakamoto.
The Hollywood Reporter‘s lead critic David Rooney reviewed Happyend earlier this week, writing: “Sora strikes an expert tonal balance between the bittersweet, elegiac qualities of the end-of-school drama” while “bringing a light yet lingering touch to larger fears affecting all of us.”
Set in a near-future Tokyo, Happyend follows two best friends who are about to graduate high school amid threats of a catastrophic earthquake. After they pull a prank on their principal, which leads to a high-tech surveillance system being installed in their school, they find their friendship being pulled apart by their contrasting views on how to respond to an increasingly oppressive political mood sweeping Japan.
Said Sora in a statement: “I made this film imagining what a near-future might look like, drawing parallels with Japan’s history of earthquakes unearthing social contradictions. 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. I can’t wait to see how the film will connect with audiences in the U.S.”
Added Metrograph Pictures head David Laub: “Neo Sora is 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. 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.”