Tsutomu Mirikitani was born in Sacramento and raised in Hiroshima. He returned to the United States on the eve of World War II, only to lose much of his family in the bombing of his childhood city and his freedom in his native state. In Cats, we meet “Jimmy” at 80 years old, a self-described “Grand Master Artist” living on the streets of Soho in New York City. Already befriended by the filmmaker months before September 11, she takes him in following that day’s toxic events. Cats is a film which succeeds brilliantly on a number of levels, not the least of which is the everpresence of hope, as revealed in Mirikitani’s capacity, even at a very late hour in his life, to clear the pain of his past.

(2006, 74 min. in English and Japanese with English subtitles) – G.R.