Sugar Glass Bottle

Sugar Glass Bottle

In this stylish neo-noir set in a near-future Tokyo, two teenage boys planning a prank discover the hard edges of the real estate market.

2023 · 20 min · ★ 6.6 · Drama, Science Fiction

Near-future Tokyo. Kou, through the help of his high school best friend, finds a surprising way to express his mounting frustration at the insidious forces of commercialism that are forcing out the neighbors he cares most about. Initially inspired by a prank that the writer-director Neo Sora (The Chicken, 2020) had pulled on him in his childhood, a sense of warm nostalgia and cold, material reality intermingle to tell a tale set in the not-so-distant future about disappearing spaces and the forces of policing and gentrification that drills this process forward.

Directed by Neo Sora · Written by Neo Sora

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