Events

Time and Location

Aug. 4-9
Avon Cinema / Donald J. Farish Auditorium / Providence Performing Arts Center / Providence Showcase Cinema / The Vets Cinematheque / The Vets / Misquamicut Drive-In Theater

Please see schedule for time and location.

About

Rhode Island International Film Festival (RIIFF) draws film submissions from over 100 countries, celebrating diverse global storytelling. With numerous Oscar-qualifying films, the festival provides a prestigious platform for international filmmakers. Organized by Flickers, this festival offers an artistic exchange as well as opportunities for the global creative community that are not available in the established entertainment industry. It is designed to foster contact among film directors, artists, producers, distributors, backers and audiences.

Filmmakers will have an opportunity to share new film product, test-market films in development, and share the film-making process with industry peers, students, and the general public.

This year’s film festival will feature several films, shorts, and documentaries featuring Japanese stories and directors, including:

Continuations
16min Documentary
Director/Satoru Okabe

At some of Japan’s most prestigious shrines, roofs are covered with cypress bark and carefully restored every forty years using a technique passed down for more than a thousand years. Filming this work has long been extremely difficult, as it takes place in sacred spaces, and even in Japan very few people have ever witnessed the process. The reason this material has been chosen for sacred architecture is not merely practical. For Japanese people, shrines have long been an essential part of life, connected to a sense of reverence that is difficult even for Japanese people to fully explain in words. It is precisely because these are sacred places that cypress bark has continued to be used.

This documentary offers a rare opportunity to observe the craft through the trust built between the filmmaker and the artisans.

The craftsmen’s techniques are both remarkably efficient and beautifully refined. Yet this is more than a film about traditional craftsmanship. Their work reflects the Japanese sense of beauty, a philosophy that has shaped the country’s culture, influenced the spirit of Bushido, and continues to define the Japanese view of life.

Through the restoration of a shrine roof, Continuations offers a deeper understanding of the spirit of Japan.

Foxing: Kitsuné-tsuki
15-minute animated short
Director/Takeru Shinozuka (Toei Animation)

The first title from ETERNA Animation, Toei Animation’s new production brand dedicated to original creator-driven works follows Shinano, a character designer drifting through a monotonous routine. Her work is absorbed into a commercially driven system, and on social media, she feels no sense of belonging, deepening her loneliness.
One day, Koyami—a fox-masked character from her old doodles—appears, followed by other discarded creations, blurring reality and imagination. As she wanders through her own mind, Shinano realizes they are fragments of herself—the shape of her loneliness—and chooses to keep creating while living with it.

Haru-tsuge Fish and Fu-rai Boy: Tsuri-bari Fish caught in summer grass
Director/Takeshi Yashiro

“Tsuri-bari Fish” (the fishing lure) is left stranded in a vast meadow, suspending from a tree branch after its line snaps. While yearning for the shore-fisherman who created it, the little lure has been enduring the passing seasons all alone. However, as spring finally arrives, a chance encounter with “Fu-rai Boy” (The Little Wanderer) and “Haru-tsuge Fish” (The Harbinger of Spring) brings a transformative twist to its lonely fate.

Monkey Drum
Director/Jeremy Lu

Set entirely in an isolated cabin in the rural Japanese countryside, Monkey Drum tells the story of Minato, a reclusive elderly man who begins taking care of a starving father and his son. When a fierce storm strands the three overnight, tensions rise as family secrets threaten to rot the cabin from the inside out. A cold, nightmarish, and eerily atmospheric horror film, Monkey Drum oscillates between moments of quiet reflection and visceral brutality – unflinchingly exploring themes of self-neglect, familial dysfunction, and grief.

Summer Project
18-minute drama short film
Director/Yuki Hara (Ghost Gate Films)

A boy with no friends named Akira discovers a severed head and names it “Nakagawa-san” as part of his summer project. He quickly gains friends who decide to search for the rest of its body. But as the head shows signs of decay, the innocent adventure transforms into an irreversible nightmare.

The Night We Met
12-minute drama short film
Director/Fumiya Hayakawa

On the night of Setsubun, the Japanese celebration to welcome spring and drive away evil spirits, a young boy and his father have a disturbing encounter at the local grocery store, blurring the lines between myth and reality.

For more information: Home RIIFF – Rhode Island International Film Festival

This event is supported through the JFNY Grant for Arts and Culture.