I WAS A SIMPLE MAN

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I WAS A SIMPLE MAN

By Christopher MAKOTO YOGI

Drama - Completed 2021

A ghost story set in the pastoral countryside of the north shore of O'ahu, Hawai'i. Told in four chapters, it tells the story of an elderly man facing the end of his life, visited by the ghosts of his past.

Festivals
& Awards

Sundance Film Festival (online) 2021

U.S. Dramatic Competition

- Year of production
- 2021
- Genres
- Drama
- Countries
- USA
- Languages
- ENGLISH
- Duration
- 100 mn
- Director(s)
- Christopher MAKOTO YOGI
- Cast
- Constance WU, Steve IWAMOTO, Kanoa GOO, Chanel Akiko HIRAI, Tim CHIOU, Boonyanudh JIYAROM
- Producer(s)
- Sarah S. KIM, Christopher Makoto YOGI, Matthew PETOCK, Yamato CIBULKA
- Synopsis
- The rushing wind on the North Shore of Oahu, Hawai'i, never stops. It constantly rustles the leaves outside Masao’s house, providing a balmy sonic backdrop. Nature is both a driving force and a spiritual indicator in I Was a Simple Man, the second feature from writer-director Christopher Makoto Yogi. When Masao is healthy, his plants thrive; when a terminal sickness encroaches, the plants wither and die. The island’s ambient noises—the waves, the wind, the birds—thread through the film’s time-shifting chapters, from the pre-World War II sugar plantations of Oahu to Hawai'i statehood to the present gentrification of Honolulu.
  
  As Masao gets sicker, he is visited by ghosts of his past, including his wife, Grace (Constance Wu), who helps shepherd him into the beyond. Part dream, part family history, I Was a Simple Man feels both achingly intimate and incredibly expansive. The director’s restrained filmmaking grounds the film in Hawaii’s pastoral landscape, while match cuts and surrealistic editing alter time and space, connecting and disrupting past and present and one family’s relationship to their patriarch—and the place they call home.

I WAS A SIMPLE MAN

Festivals& Awards

Festivals
& Awards