HIFF is honored to host a return engagement of the Hawai‘i made and award winning film AUGUST AT AKIKO’S, the feature film directorial debut of Christopher Makoto Yogi and starring avant grade musician Alex Zhang Hungtai, two local boys who are making waves in their respective creative fields. You can view the film, FOR FREE, starting May 29, at HIFF Virtual Cinema.

The New Yorker hailed the film as “one of the best movies of 2019” and Filmmaker Magazine praised it as, “simultaneously blissful and joyous, becalmed yet full of life, AUGUST AT AKIKO’S channels a “slow-cinema” aesthetic into a pointedly Hawai’ian locale.”

AUGUST AT AKIKO’S world premiered at the International Film Festival Rotterdam and would play around the world in numerous film festivals, arthouse theaters and cinematheques. HIFF presented the Hawai‘i premiere at #HIFF38 in 2018.

About AUGUST AT AKIKO’S:
AUGUST AT AKIKO’S is a mystical film that lives in the seams between dream, reality, and memory with a time-signature all its own. Armed with just his suitcase and a sax, cosmopolitan musician Alex Zhang Hungtai (Dirty Beaches, Last Lizard) returns home to the Big Island of Hawai‘i having been away for nearly a decade. Amidst possessed sax solos and brooding strolls, Alex stumbles upon a Buddhist bed & breakfast run by a woman named Akiko (Akiko Masuda). Hungtai’s wild sax and Akiko’s Buddhist bells form the base for a rich soundtrack that wraps around the audience like a sonic web surrounding the unexpected new friendship.

HIFF was fortunate to host a Zoom Q&A with the director Christopher Makoto Yogi on May 30. View the entire video over at HIFF’s Facebook page.

About HIFF Virtual Cinema
We are pleased to present new independent arthouse films, encores of past HIFF favorites, and an ever-rotating selection of virtual cinema to stream from home as part of our HIFF@HOME initiative. Each film has a button link to the distributor’s screening portal where you’ll be able to rent the film and begin watching. For most transactions, HIFF receives up to 50% of the transaction. Stay healthy, stay home, and support HIFF with HIFF Virtual Cinema!