Announcing Plainwater Films

Happyend, Neo Sora’s stylish narrative debut about teenagers in near-future Tokyo — currently mid–festival circuit, and an indie breakout at this year’s Sydney Film Festival.

We’re thrilled to announce the launch of Plainwater Films—an Australian home for independent cinema, and a new venture dedicated to essential films from around the world.

We begin with two features we couldn’t be more excited about: Afternoons of Solitude by Albert Serra (Pacifiction, Liberté, The Death of Louis XIV), and Happyend by Neo Sora (Ryuichi Sakamoto | Opus).

Happyend arrives fresh following a sold-out run at this year’s Sydney Film Festival, with stops ahead at Melbourne and New Zealand International Film Festivals. Following its premiere at Venice, the Hollywood Reporter praised the film as a “confident first step into narrative features for Neo Sora” adding that it “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.”

Afternoons of Solitude, which premiered at San Sebastián (where it took home the Golden Shell), has quietly emerged as one of critics’ top films of 2024 & 2025, and finds Serra at the top of his game. Variety described it as “a major work from a richly maturing filmmaker” noting its “use of languid repetition and sensory saturation” to pull “the audience into something approaching a discomfiting dream state.”

Both films are set for theatrical releases across Australia this year, with Happyend also bound for cinemas in New Zealand.

We’re honoured to be working on their release.