SHIMANCHU
ISLANDER'S
FILM FESTIVAL
島んちゅぬ映画祭
From the Depth of 'KUKURU'
Three days of celebration where the sea, sky, and cinema intersect.
Date
2026.3.20-22
Location
Ishigaki Island
ISHIGAKI Island
Edition
SIFF 1
1st Edition
Screening Schedule
上映スケジュール
Gloaming in Luomu
ルオムに黄昏て
Director: Zhang Lu
Country: China | 2025
Duration: 99 min | Fiction
Best Film, Busan International Film Festival 2025
Three years ago, her lover Wang disappeared without a trace. One day, Bai receives a postcard from him with the words "Gloaming in Luomu." Taking the card in hand, she travels to Luomu, an ancient tow...
Trailer
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Leave the Cat Alone
猫を放つ
Director: Shigaya Daisuke
Country: Japan | 2025
Duration: 102 min | Fiction
Official Selection, Busan International Film Festival 2025 Competition / Tokyo FiLMEX Official Selection
Mori, a musician, struggles with the growing distance between him and his wife Maiko, who works as a photographer. One day, he unexpectedly reunites with Asako, a former lover, and the two begin takin...
Trailer
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Journey into Sato Tadao
佐藤忠男、映画の旅
Director: Terasaki Mizuho
Country: Japan | 2025
Duration: 98 min | Documentary
Special Opening Film, Asian Future Section, Tokyo International Film Festival 2025
Sato Tadao, a giant in film criticism who systematized Japanese film history and continued his critical activities for 60 years. His journey, which began with self-study, was devoted to discovering an...
Trailer
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Militantropos
ミリタントロポス
Director: Alina Gorlova, Co-directors
Country: Ukraine | 2025
Duration: 111 min | Documentary
March 22 (Sat) 11:00–12:51
Official Selection, Directors' Fortnight, Cannes Film Festival 2025
Through the fragmented reality brought about by Russia's invasion of Ukraine, this film examines the very essence of human existence. Those who are forced to leave their homes and lose their daily liv...
Trailer
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Powwow People
パウワウ・ピープル
Director: Sky Hopinka
Country: USA | 2025
Duration: 89 min | Documentary
Official Selection, Toronto International Film Festival 2025
Powwow, which expresses identity through song and dance, is an indispensable celebration for Native American communities. Sky Hopinka, a filmmaker and media artist, records this culture from the insid...
Trailer
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A Fox Under A Pink Moon
少女は月夜に夢をみる
Director: Mehrdad Oskouei, Soraya Co-director
Country: Iran | 2025
Duration: 76 min | Documentary
Opening Screening — IMPACT FROM THE ISHIGAKI ISLAND
March 20 (Thu) 11:00–12:16
+ 50 min talk
Best Film, International Documentary Film Festival in Amsterdam 2025
Soraya, an Afghan girl, lost her father at the age of five and came to live with her uncle. Exposed to violence from an early age, she was separated from her mother at eight and eventually learned tha...
Trailer
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A Grandfather
祖父
Director: Vytautas Oskinis
Country: Lithuania | 2025
Duration: 67 min | Documentary
Official Selection, Jihlava International Documentary Film Festival 2025
In 1991, Vytautas Landsbergis, Lithuania's first head of state who nonviolently won national sovereignty from the Soviet Union, continues to question the essence of humanity that mankind has long soug...
Trailer
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Whisperings of the Moon
月のささやき
Director: Yuqing Lai
Country: Hong Kong, China, Cambodia, India | 2025
Duration: 87 min | Fiction
March 22 (Sat) 14:45–16:12
Official Selection, Busan International Film Festival 2025
Returning to her hometown of Phnom Penh from New York for her father's funeral, theater actress Nisay reunites with her former lover Tida. The film moves back and forth between the past seven years ag...
Trailer
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Sorella Di Clausura
修道女
Director: Ivana Mladenovic
Country: Romania, Serbia, Italy, Spain | 2025
Duration: 103 min | Fiction
March 22 (Sat) 19:30–21:13
Official Selection, Locarno International Film Festival 2025
Stella is 36 years old, highly educated, but unable to hold down a job. Since she was 12 years old and first saw him on a black-and-white television, she has been captivated by Boban, a star singer fr...
Trailer
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Holofiction
ホロフィクション
Director: Michal Kosakowski
Country: Germany, Austria | 2025
Duration: 102 min | Documentary
March 22 (Sat) 18:00–19:42
Official Selection, Venice International Film Festival 2025
Exploring the visual representation of the Holocaust through a montage of 3,000 excerpts from fiction films and television series produced from 1938 to the present. Based on a vast archive of more tha...
Trailer
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God in a Military Uniform
軍服を着た神様
Director: Endo Kanou
Country: Japan | 2025
Duration: 107 min | Documentary
March 22 (Sat) 15:40–17:27
Official Selection, Korea International Ethnographic Film Festival 2025 / Official Selection, Germany International Ethnographic Film Festival 2026
Ghosts of Japanese people appear in Taiwan. They are said to be Japanese from the era when Taiwan was a Japanese colony. Astonishingly, these ghosts have become gods that grant small wishes of Taiwane...
Trailer
Watch on YouTubeSpecial Screenings & Official Side Events
特集上映 & 映画祭公式サイドイベント
【Focus】Goethe-Institut Tokyo Special Project
The World of Lotte Reiniger's Silhouette Animation
Doctor Dolittle and His Animals - Free Screening of 3 Short Films
Screening 1: Saturday, March 21
Special Gift:
Blue Seal, Okinawa’s ice cream brand, will give free ice cream to elementary school children.
Note:
The March 21 screening is limited to Ishigaki Elementary School students and parents, and festival pass holders.
Screening 2: Sunday, March 22
Students (elementary to high school): Free / General admission: ¥1,000 / Festival pass holders: Free
Screening Films
Adventure 1: Journey to Africa (1928)
Adventure 2: The Monkey Bridge (1928)
Adventure 3: The Sick Monkeys (1928)
Lotte Reiniger (1899-1981) was a German silhouette animation pioneer who created the world's first feature-length animated film, "The Adventures of Prince Achmed" (1926). This special screening features three short films from the "Doctor Dolittle" series, showcasing her unique cut-out animation technique. These charming works demonstrate the artistry and craftsmanship of early animation.
Product Offering: Foremost Blue Seal Co., Ltd.
【Focus】Living on the Border
Practices and Resistance of Nature, Body, and Community
Screening Schedule
Screening Films
METS Forest MORI
Asian PremiereDirector: Ants Tammik, Taavi Tatsi | Featuring: Daizaburo Sakamoto | 2025 | Estonia | 42 min
Resisting the Wind
Rough CutDirector: Valerie Portefaix + Setsuko Yamazato | Documentary/Experimental | 90 min
Dog Shit Food
Okinawa PremiereDirector: Pero Fukuda | 2025 | Documentary/Experimental | 26 min
This special feature presents four documentaries that explore the themes of living on borders - geographical, political, and cultural. From environmental activism to indigenous rights, these films showcase individuals and communities resisting dominant narratives and practicing alternative ways of being. Through the lens of Okinawa and other island communities, we examine how people navigate complex identities and maintain their connection to land, culture, and each other in the face of external pressures.
Guest AttendingDaizaburo Sakamoto
Born in Chiba Prefecture. For over 20 years, he has practiced Shugendo (mountain asceticism) and Yamabushi culture, currently based in Yamagata Prefecture. Using natural environments such as caves, mountains, rivers, and forests as sites for creation and contemplation, he has presented works that reconsider the relationship between mythology, folklore, faith, and contemporary society through physical practices, rituals, and fieldwork.
His activities extend beyond installations and video works in exhibition spaces to include practices involving the body in cave retreats and mountains, reinterpretation of land-specific rituals and memories - developing as "artistic practice mediated through ways of living itself."
In recent years, he has also held exhibitions and collaborations domestically and internationally (Korea, Thailand, Southeast Asia, Europe, etc.), exploring the relationships between art, ritual, economy, and community in a cross-disciplinary manner.
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Major Exhibitions & Projects
- Kinan Art Week 2025-26 "ややこしき いざなみ" Kumano Sanzan Art Research Program (Wakayama, 2026)
- PLANETARY SEED (100 Tonson Foundation, Thailand, 2024)
- AIGU OM! European Capital of Culture Program (Estonia, 2024)
- documenta 15 (Germany, 2022)
- MIND TRAIL Museum in the Mind (Nara, 2021, 2022)
- Reborn-Art Festival (Miyagi, 2019, 2021)
- Holy Mountains Exhibition (Moerenuma Park, Sapporo, 2016)
- Setouchi Triennale 2016 Autumn (Kagawa)
- Yamagata Biennale (2014, 2016)
Dance / Performance Works
- "Three Worlds" Created by: Yuko Okubo, Daizaburo Sakamoto | Performed by: Yasutake Shimaji, Yuko Okubo, Daizaburo Sakamoto | Music: Shuta Hasunuma (Moerenuma Park, Sapporo, 2016)
- "Someday I'll Become You" Reborn-Art Festival | Created by: Yuko Okubo, Daizaburo Sakamoto | Performed by: Chiza dopness, Aoi Yamada, Yuko Okubo, Daizaburo Sakamoto | Music: Chiza dopness (Miyagi, 2019)
Documentary Film
- METS/Forest Featuring (Estonia, 2025)
Publications
- "Yamabushi and I" (Little More, 2012)
- "Yamabushi Notes" (Gijutsu-Hyohron Co., 2013)
- "Mountain Deities" (A&F, 2019)
Guest AttendingValérie Portefaix
Valérie Portefaix (France/Hong Kong/Japan) is Director of MA Umi in Ishigaki since 2022 and MAP Office, a multidisciplinary platform in Hong Kong since 1996, co-founded with Laurent Gutierrez. The relation between bodies and territories is at the centre of her research-based artistic production. With 30 years of multifaceted navigations, publications, and exhibitions around the world, her practice has evolved across multiple fields and disciplines, having recently developed a focus on islands and other liquid territories as a subject and object of study, through these investigations. After more than a decade of exploring the effects of globalization and urbanization in Hong Kong and China, she is investigating a new geography of archipelagos that characterize the transient and globalized environment of the Anthropocene age.
Guest AttendingSetsuko Yamazato
Setsuko Yamazato (Japan) defines herself as an islander and is known as an unwavering veteran peace activist, poet and song writer. She was born in Tonoshiro on March 21 1937. Raised by her grandmother due to her mother's illness, Setsuko was seven years old when the war broke and with her family relocated to refuge in the jungle. Later, with proficient English skills acquired alongside geologist Helen Foster, she worked as an air hostess and for the Yaeyama Ryukyuan American Cultural Centre. Her activism began in 1986, protesting the construction of an airport on Shiraho's coral reef, leading to the preservation of the sea with support from international environmentalists. In 2016, in response to Ishigaki's militarization, she founded and still serves as president of the Grandmothers Association for the Protection of Life and Livelihood.
2024, Clouds of War, 125 minutes, narration and songs, Chie Mikami (director)
Guest Attendingfukudapero
fukudapero is a poet, artist, and multimodal anthropologist from Japan. Working across film, installation, poetry, and text, their practice explores and unsettles the boundaries between art and scholarship, seeking to construct a different and more holistic form of knowledge. Their work has been nominated for the Forward Prize for Poetry and was selected by Gendaishitecho magazine as one of Japan’s Emerging Poets.
【Focus】In our 20's
A special feature showcasing works by female filmmakers in their 20s from Japan and Asia. Their fluctuating inner worlds, determination toward something not yet fully formed, emotions and perspectives that only they at this age could capture - all emerge through the medium of cinema. Bittersweet and at times suffocatingly earnest, yet impossible to look away from, these are their inner worlds. Sometimes incorporating experimental expressions, these works transform incompleteness and being in the midst of uncertainty into strength, gazing straight back at life and the world.
Whisperings of the Moon
Japan PremiereLGBTQ+Director: Yuqing Lai | Hong Kong, China, Cambodia, India | 2025 | 87 min | Official Selection, Busan International Film Festival 2025
Returning to her hometown of Phnom Penh from New York for her father's funeral, theater actress Nisay reunites with her former lover Tida. The film moves back and forth between the past seven years ago when they were lovers and the present, depicting the emotions that fluctuate between the love permitted only on stage and the constraints Nisay faces in Phnom Penh society. Memories of love, an uncertain future, inner struggles without form, forgiveness, and the suffocating nature of living. The director is Lai Yuchin from China. Despite being expected to have a promising future, she suddenly passed away in Phnom Penh on December 30, 2025, at the young age of 23. This film is both the debut feature and the posthumous work of a young female filmmaker.
Watch TrailerMy Last Summer
Director AttendingDirector: Nishime Aoi | Japan | 2025 | 42 min
The last summer "I" spend on my hometown island. During summer vacation of her senior year in high school, Lisa returns to the island as if escaping from her life in Tokyo, where she meets Noa, who lives on the island and is the same age. Together with Noa, who continues to write replies to letters from her 12-year-old self, the two spend their respective "last summers" while harboring complex feelings about their hometown and anxiety about a future that has yet to take shape. This work vividly depicts the reality and emotions with nowhere to go that the island's younger generation faces, through an authentic perspective. It is the directorial debut of Nishime Aoi, who is from Ishigaki Island. Shot entirely on location in Ishigaki Island with classmates from Nihon University College of Art, it is a coming-of-age story where nostalgia and poignancy intersect.
Watch TrailerThe House of Kappa
World PremiereDirector AttendingDirector: Shibata Hina | Japan | 2025 | 53 min
A young man visits an empty house for maintenance. In the house where no one should be, multiple worlds coexist in multiple ways, where women live their lives in that house, sometimes intersecting. A dramatic film born from an encounter with a house built 50 years ago but never inhabited. Starting from impressive events that occurred during the stay for filming preparation, this is a story discovered through cinema, born while exploring new forms of collaboration with actors and staff. Graduated from Tama Art University, currently enrolled in the Master's Program in Intermedia Art at Tokyo University of the Arts. Her debut directorial work "Twilight Reflection" (22 min, 2023) was screened at Nippon Connection 2025 and Image Forum Festival 2023.
Watch TrailerIce Cream Syndrome
Okinawa PremiereDirector AttendingDirector: Arisato Marina | Japan | 2025 | 7 min
Noda Soma, who is spending hopeless days, reunites with his high school classmate Hamasuna Chinatsu in front of a convenience store one day. However, she was supposed to have died 10 years ago. Created by Ari Marina, an actor and director who graduated from Waseda University School of Science and Engineering, based on her recent experience of "death" and the time spent facing it. Shot entirely in Nobeoka City, Miyazaki Prefecture, the world depicted in the Nobeoka dialect also contains a longing for dialect and the atmosphere of the land. Official Selection, 26th Hamburg Japanese Film Festival.
Watch TrailerTheater Group "Gunshu no Tami" Yaeyama Debut Performance
"PS Drifting Chronicle"
Islands, islands, and more islands. Japan as an island nation is not made up of a single island, but is formed by a chain of many islands. A group of multiple islands is called an "archipelago," but why do we perceive these separate, isolated islands as a single entity? And how can we, as individuals existing separately, possess a sense of community that allows us to say "we"? When you think about it, each "I" is an island, and "we" are an archipelago. Yet these islands move, like boats. These boat-islands traveling back and forth blur their respective boundaries and create new forms of community.
On this occasion, the stage appears in the southern islands that cluster and connect. — Five young people drift ashore from different places.
Producer's Story
Official Festival Party
*Guests without a festival pass are also welcome to attend.
*As the venue will be open for regular business, please be sure to order at least one drink.
A film festival is a place to encounter, learn about, and share stories. It's not just about watching films, but about listening to the time behind them, the choices of the people involved, and someone's life story, being moved, and sharing those stories with others. The official festival party "Producer's Story" is set on Ishigaki Island, the island of food ingredients, where producers from inside and outside the island meet, listen to their encounters and respective stories, and enjoy a meal together. Enjoy food and drinks from the heart of Kukuru.
Episode 1
Hirata Farm (Ishigaki Island) × Matsufuku Winery (Towada City, Aomori) × spice chabo (Ishigaki Island)
While livestock farmers suffered serious damage during the COVID-19 pandemic, Hirata Farm overcame difficulties and is trying to introduce a new brand of culled cows from Ishigaki Island to the world. And Matsufuku Winery, run by a man who once dreamed of becoming a film director, operates a one-on-one welfare facility in his hometown of Towada City, Aomori Prefecture. Welcome to the night when these two stories meet.
Party Screening: Ravers × Film
Ishigaki Island, a place without movie theaters, is dotted with unique clubs and bars where rave culture still thrives. "Raver × Film" is held for the island's ravers. In its inaugural year, it will be held at "Agayaa Studio," established in 2025 by dj kiyo, who is active as an organizer and DJ in Ishigaki's party scene. Picking up the latest club films that are rarely seen even at film festivals around the world, it delivers a special screening experience where music and visuals intersect. After the screening, there will be an after-party. Launching the first edition with the aim of beach live screenings in the future.
Screening
Rave On
Director: Nikias Chryssos, Viktor Jakovleski
Country: Germany | 2025
Runtime: 80 min | Fiction
Cosmo, a music producer based in Berlin, tries to hand over his newly created record to the DJ of the city's most legendary techno club. But that mission turns into a long night's journey. In the course of one night, Cosmo confronts past mistakes and abandoned dreams.