Directed by Christopher Makoto Yogi • 2021 • United States
Starring Steve Iwamoto, Constance Wu, Tim Chiou
Christopher Makoto Yogi’s spellbinding cinematic reverie is a ghost story set in the lush countryside of the north shore of O‘ahu, Hawai‘i. Unfolding in four chapters, it tells the story of an elderly man (Steve Iwamoto) facing the end of his life, visited by the ghosts of his past. Incorporating history and mythology, dream logic and surrealism, I WAS A SIMPLE MAN is a time-shifting, kaleidoscopic story of a fractured family facing the death of their patriarch that takes viewers from the high-rises of contemporary Honolulu to the pre-WWII pastorals of O‘ahu and, finally, into the beyond.