The Cats of Gokoyu Shrine

An ancient Shinto shrine in a traditional Japanese village, home to dozens of street cats, is the timeless setting for this meditative observational documentary selected for Berlinale 2024.

Kazuhiro Soda’s latest film is set in the region where he also filmed Oyster Factory (SFF 2016) and Inland Sea (SFF 2018). It’s a mesmerizingly beautiful location for this tale of feline-human interaction. Tabbies, gingers, calicos, and other breeds lounge around the ‘Cat Shrine’ receiving food from visitors. The community is largely tolerant, but the volume of cats and people is beginning to intrude on the serenity of this spiritual environment and a new approach is needed. Soda lived on the island for years, and his intimate familiarity with the locality enables him to capture every detail of this world with humour and tenderness.