The Cats of Gokogu Shrine

  • The Cats of Gokogu Shrine Event Image

    Date

    Friday, March 21, 2025
    7:00 pm–9:00 pm

    Location

    Freer Gallery of Art
    Meyer Auditorium

Description

Followed by a live video Q&A with director Kazuhiro Soda!

Watch the trailer

Beyond the adorable feline antics, this documentary captures the beauty and struggle of life in Ushimado, a coastal Japanese town. A pack of stray cats lives in the local shrine, but their impact on the town drives a wedge in the community. By chronicling the tensions, documentarian Kazuhiro Soda raises questions about our duty to the animals around us. “Soda has made an intimate, complex portrait of not just the cats and their allies but also a community in decline — a community of which he is a recent but concerned member,” writes Mark Schilling of The Japan Times.

(Dir.: Kazuhiro Soda, Japan/United States, 2024, 119 min., DCP, Japanese with English subtitles)


Image courtesy of Asian Shadows

Cost

Free. Register in advance (recommended)

Get Tickets/Register

Get Tickets/Register

Accessibility & Accommodations

Assisted listening devices, Captioning, Wheelchair accessible

Topics

After Five, Films

Event Series

The Environmental Film Festival in the Nation's Capital