Broad Listening
In a Japan grappling with an aging population, political apathy, and a stagnant system, AI engineer and science fiction author Takahiro Anno launches a new political party, Team Mirai. Their goal: to upgrade democracy for the digital age.
Join me? Looking for Japan-Based Collaborators
This film is currently in development, and I am looking for Japanese-speaking collaborators to join the team. Any form of collaboration is welcome—from directing and producing to camera or sound, translation, and production support.
If you are interested in the intersection of technology, politics, and documentary filmmaking, please contact me at hello@leonelki.com.
About This Film
Broad Listening is a sci-fi documentary. It offers a portrait of Anno and his team of young engineers as they build open-source tools to make politics more transparent and participatory. As Japan's newest and youngest political party, the film follows their struggle to implement their vision of "broad listening" within the rigid confines of Japanese politics.
Second, the film ventures into the near future. In a series of co-created, speculative sci-fi scenes, it visualizes the world that Team Mirai is fighting for. This future is not a technological dystopia, but a "shared reality" where digital tools have successfully created a more meaningful and deeply engaged democracy. By interweaving today's political reality with tomorrow's possibilities, Broad Listening explores whether an update to democracy in Japan is possible.
Details
- DirectorLeo Nelki
- WriterLeo Nelki
- TypeCreative Documentary
- Year2026
- Duration35 mins
- StatusIn Production
Further Context: The Global Digital Democracy Movement
Takahiro Anno's work is part of a growing global movement using technology to reinvent democratic processes. For decades, digital tools like social media have often amplified polarization. This new wave of "civic tech" aims to do the opposite: build systems designed for consensus and collaboration.
A core philosophical guide for this movement is the book Plurality, co-authored by Taiwan's first Digital Minister, Audrey Tang, and economist Glen Weyl. It argues for designing technology that bridges social differences and harnesses diversity as a strength for progress.
The most prominent real-world example is vTaiwan, a pioneering project in Taiwan. It's a hybrid online-offline process where citizens, experts, and government officials deliberate on complex national issues. Using tools like Polis, vTaiwan has successfully forged consensus on contentious topics like Uber regulation and AI governance.
Polis itself is a key innovation. Developed by the non-profit Computational Democracy Project, it's a survey and discussion platform that uses machine learning not to maximize engagement, but to identify areas of "group-informed consensus" that cut across different opinion groups.
In Japan, this movement is gaining traction. Anno's political party, Team Mirai, and his non-partisan Digital Democracy 2030 project are applying these principles to the Japanese context, developing open-source tools for political transparency and citizen deliberation. Elsewhere, municipalities like Kakogawa City are experimenting with platforms like Decidim to involve citizens in local planning. These efforts represent a shared global experiment to build a more responsive, resilient, and participatory democracy for the 21st century.