Green Jail

There remains only silence in the “Green Jail” in Iriomote Island, Okinawa, Japan. Before World War II, “Green Jail” was a large-scale mining village under Greater East Asia Imperialism which imprisoned thousands of miners, who were from Kyushu, Japanese colonies Taiwan and Korea and other places of Japan. Most of them died from malaria or were forced to work there. As for “Taiwanese miners”, the morphine injection was prevalent so that they could work nonstop day and night.

Grandma Hashima is the daughter of the head of colonial Taiwanese miners Yang Tien-fu, who experienced the coal mine days in Okinawa. She’s already 92 years old, living alone in an old shaggy wooden house where her family lived, near the “jail on the sea” with the tomb of her parents. Nearly no one visits her. What has happened in the coal mine? Grandma’s adoptive father, who recruited hundreds of Taiwanese miners to “Green Jail”, making them unable to get back to Taiwan and leave the jail… Is he an assaulter or a victim of Japanese Imperialism?

This film portrays the last years of Grandma Hashima’s life, with her memory of crime, pain, anger and the miserable history throughout 80 years.

Director : Yin-Yu Huang - 2022 - France - Taïwan - 101 minutes
Producer : 24images - Moolin Films - Siglo Ltd - Broadcaster : LMTV