The Dole Cannery Stadium 18 in Honolulu was bustling with people of nearly every kind this past weekend as the first week of the 35th Hawaii International Film Festival (HIFF) took place.
According to Robert Lambeth, the executive director of HIFF, the festival had a lot to offer this year with 32 world premieres, 17 United States premiers, and 14 international premiers out of 181 films spanning a source of 41 countries. The festival had different categories, some of which were showcases or spotlights on different countries or regions.
Europe, the Pacific, and Southeast Asia all had showcases, while there were spotlights on China, India, Korea, Taiwan, the Philippines, with the biggest spotlight on Japan. One particularly important premier out of the spotlight on Japan that took place on Nov. 14 was the world premiere of the Japanese film “Hana’s Miso Soup.”
The film is based on the true story of a woman diagnosed with cancer. It shows the journey she has with her husband and daughter, who they were told they’d never have. She combats her illness with a cooking blog that helps others improve their lives as she has.The leading actress of the film, Ryoko Hirosue, was present after the first screening of the film for a question and answer session with some festival staff as well as the audience.
Hirosue had seen a documentary about Chie, the woman she would be portraying, and “found the script to be very painful and heavy, so the writers rewrote it four to five times with my feedback to make it more cheerful, because I think that’s how Chie would have wanted it to be.”
While the film deals with the difficult topic of terminal illness, one that affects so many people in the world today, Hirosue and the rest of the cast and crew for the film said they hope people gain a certain hope and motivation for their own lives. Hirosue has been awarded the HIFF Career Achievement Award for this year.
Other award winners include Japanese actor Tadanobu Asano, who received the Maverick Award, Korean actor and director Ha Jung Woo, who received the Renaissance Award, and Indian film critic and current president of the Network for the Promotion of Asian Cinema Aruna Vasudev, who received the Vision in Film Award.
For some Hawaii Pacific University students, going to the festival was a part of a class requirement. Gabriella Marzullo, a sophomore multimedia cinematic production major from New Jersey attended the festival with her classmate Zuleka Seth, a sophomore nursing major from Honolulu.
Marzullo said, “We’re in the same film class and our teacher gave us a voucher to see a free movie and then we have to write a review on it for the class.”
Other people were drawn to the festival for their love of film. Siyao Li, a local medic, heard about the festival while working one day and visited the HIFF website where she signed up to be a HIFF volunteer. She said, “I love film. I want to do video editing later on in my life and I thought this would be a good chance for me to see how they run a film festival and I might get the chance to meet some directors.”
HIFF continues through Nov. 22, and the film schedule as well as ticket purchasing options can be found on the HIFF website for anyone interested in attending.