This year’s Okinawa International Movie Festival is continuing the tradition of screening films about or shot in Japan’s southernmost prefecture of Okinawa. Local film fans and visitors from the rest of Japan and abroad crowded the Yoshimoto Okinawa Kagetsu theater on Friday April 19 for the day-long program “A Great Gathering of Films About Okinawa.” They enjoyed a wide range of offerings, from a documentary to an over-the-top zombie comedy.

The day kicked off with a selection of three short films about unexpected connections. “Ai and Ai - Indigo Love” begins with a wealthy young woman from Taiwan (Sachiko Judy Fukumoto, who also directed the short) arriving at the island where her mother grew up. Surrounded by the beautiful scenery of Okinawa, she befriends an unemployed fisherman (Okinawa-born actor Shogen), leading to a touching, emotional love story.

“Goat on a Walk” is about goat that escapes being slaughtered and turned into the stew that Okinawan families eat on auspicious occasions. As neighbors join in the chase, leading to many slapstick moments that had the audience laughing aloud. Eventually the goat teams up with a young boy who helps him evade capture.

“The Chosen One” centers on a lonely guy from Taiwan who has spent years learning Japanese after finding a message in a bottle from the Okinawan island Ishigaki. He arrives at the island and immediately falls for the young woman who wrote the letter, or at least the woman he thinks wrote it. There were a lot of laughs from the comedic moments between the lovesick young man and a pushy Japanese bicyclist played by popular comedian Gori, who also directed the film.

When the first program finished, many members of the audience decided to stay for the later screenings of films, which all present Okinawa from a different angle.

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