The Ito Sisters: An American Story

Held at the KVIE Studios, this free community event will include a Q&A with filmmaker Antonia Grace Glenn and scholar Evelyn Nakano Glenn, as well as refreshments. Additionally, KVIE will broadcast the film as part of their weekly ViewFinder series.

An Official Selection of the Berkeley Video and Film Festival (Grand Festival Award and Audience Award), the Sacramento Japanese Film Festival (Emerging Filmmaker Award), the Women’s Film Festival San Diego, the Boston Asian American Film Festival (Audience Choice Award for Feature Documentary) and the Asian Pop-Up Cinema Festival in Chicago, The Ito Sisters captures the rarely-told stories of the earliest Japanese immigrants to the United States and their American-born children, and is set largely in the Sacramento River Delta. The three sisters at the heart of the film — Nancy, Lillian and Hedy — are memorable and engaging characters, who in their 80s and 90s share stories of humor, hardship, and heartbreak, dating back to their father’s immigration from Japan to the US in 1897. The family’s chronicle is set against the backdrop of the Anti-Japanese Movement, a 60-year campaign by politicians, journalists, landowners, and others that culminated in the forced removal and incarceration of more than 120,000 Japanese Americans from the West Coast during World War II.