Japan’s Cinema at Sea festival reveals line-up for second edition

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Ocean Elegy The Tragedies of Mudan and Ryukyu (1)

Source: Cinema At Sea

‘Ocean Elergy: The Tragedies Of Mudan And Ryukyu’

The Cinema at Sea – Okinawa Pan-Pacific International Film Festival has unveiled the lineup for its second edition, which will take place on the Japanese island prefecture from February 22 to March 2.

The festival is set to open with the world premiere of Ocean Elergy: The Tragedies Of Mudan And Ryukyu, a documentary by Taiwanese filmmaker Sean Hu. The film chronicles the Mudan Incident of 1871, a massacre which served as a pretext for Japan to invade Taiwan and annex the Kingdom of Ryukyu (what is now Okinawa).

The closing film is Tinā, the theatrical debut of directorial Miki Magasiva, who previously directed episodes of TV miniseries such as The Panthers. The film is about a mother who lost her daughter in the Christchurch earthquake of 2011 and who becomes a teacher at an elite private school. It previously received world premiere at Hawaii International Film Festival in October.

The inaugural edition of the festival, which is centred around films connected to Okinawa and its diaspora, took place in November 2023.

Organisers told Screen that the date move was “mainly because there were too many clashes with other major film festivals in Asia in November, like Busan, Golden Horse, Tokyo International Film Festival”.

This year’s director in focus is Maori director Mike Jonathan, also known as the founder of Haka Boy Films. The festival will screen two of his documentaries, Road To The Globe (2013) and Heroes For Education (2012), as well as narrative feature Ka Whawhai Tonu - Struggle without End, which was released theatrically in Australia and New Zealand last summer before screening at Toronto.

The festival’s feature film competition section comprises 10 films, including Loeloe Hendra Komara’s Tale Of The Land, which won the Fipresci prize at Busan; Zoe Eisenberg’s Chaperone, which took the grand jury award for breakouts at Slamdance; and Josephine Stewart-Te Whiu’s We Were Dangerous, which won the special jury award for filmmaking at SXSW.

The festival’s Mabui Special Award will go to the landmark 1973 documentary Asia Is One by the Nihon Documentarist Union (NDU).

Further sections include a shorts competition, Pacific Film Showcase, Special Screenings, Okinawa Panorama, Islands in Focus and VR. The festival also features a pitching forum, in which filmmakers from the Pan-Pacific region can pitch feature films of 60 minutes or more to industry professionals.

Last year’s top prize went to Taiwanese film The Mimicry by director Yu-Lin Chung while Abang Adi by Malaysia’s Jin Ong collected three awards.