USA2021100 minEnglishDrama
PART OF THE CENTREPIECE SPOTLIGHT ON HAWAI'I
On the pastoral North Shore of Oahu, Hawaii, the end is near for Masao, an ill and elderly man with regrets to spare. As he looks back, his family history, dreams, and mythology swirl around him as ghosts he carries with him in his final days. Meanwhile, I Was A Simple Man shifts in time through pre-WWII country landscapes of days past, statehood, and a concrete-bound, contemporary Honolulu, mirroring 20th-century Hawaiian history.
Following his atmospheric first feature, August at Akiko’s, and developed from his short film Obake (Ghosts), which showed at Reel Asian in 2012, with I Was A Simple Man, Christopher Makoto Yogi ambitiously continues to reach for the place between the seen and unseen, the feelings deeply felt but left unsaid, and to chart changes over time, all told with sublime imagery and sound, with a deep connection to the land, sea, and sky of his hometown in Hawaii.
- Aram Siu Wai Collier
Steve Iwamoto
Constance Wu
Tim Chiou
OFFICIAL SELECTION
Sundance Film Festival, 2021
BAMcinemaFest, 2021
Los Angeles Asian Pacific Film Festival, 2021
Christopher Makoto Yogi
Christopher Makoto Yogi is an artist and filmmaker from Honolulu, Hawaii. His debut feature film, the award-winning August at Akiko’s, had its world premiere at the International Film Festival Rotterdam in 2018 to critical acclaim. Yogi is a Berlinale Talents, Visual Communications armed with a Camera, Kyoto Filmmakers Lab, and New York Film Festival Artists Academy fellow.
10 Nov, 2021
to 19 Nov, 2021
PG
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Founded in Toronto in 1997, Reel Asian is Canada’s largest pan-Asian film festival and a year-round cultural organization dedicated to championing Asian and Asian diasporic artists and storytellers. What began as a grassroots film festival has grown into a national platform supporting filmmakers and audiences through screenings, education, industry initiatives, artist development, and community programming presented across Toronto, the GTA, and online across Canada.
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