Neo Sora’s 2024 film, Happyend, brings to life a verisimilar portrayal of a country in decline: a right-wing, authoritarian, surveillance state slowly in construction. In a process replicated throughout the world, basic rights — to privacy, to refuge, to anonymity — are stripped away, ostensibly in the name of group-safety. High school students in Sora’s film dare to ask important questions about political mobilization, and about the rights and duties we might owe in times of democratic backslide.
An analysis of the film, in conjunction with frameworks developed by John Rawls, Candice Delmas, Laura Valentini, and José Medina, allows us to understand where — and how — duty and justice interact, and where one might demand the other.
