Stateside, not many people have heard about "ABDUCTION The Megumi Yokota Story" - that's the reason they made the film.
Chris Sheridan and Patty Kim, the husband and wife directing team behind the documentary, decided to tell the story of 13-year-old Megumi because they were both so shocked that they'd never heard the story. Megumi, a JonBenet Ramsey figure of sorts in Japan, and 13 others were revealed to have been kidnapped from the beaches of Japan by North Korean spies in the 1970s and 80s. And these were only the cases confirmed by North Korea. Some speculate hundreds were abducted from Japan and from other nations around the world.
It is widely known in Japan as the "abduction issue." Five of the 13 abducted were returned to Japan in 2004, and the rest were claimed dead. But many Japanese, including the families of the abducted, refuse to believe these claims due to a lack of evidence, and have demanded further investigations into the kidnappings.
"What Americans don't realize is that this issue is totally wrapped up in the nuclear issue," said Sheridan. "Whenever North Korea and Japan sits down at the table to negotiate, Japan always brings up the abduction issue."
The abduction issue stirs up a lot of feelings of nationalism and guilt in the Japanese, Sheridan said.
"People feel a mixture of sadness, guilt and anger for the families," he said. "We always explain to Americans that this was the Japanese 9/11."
Japan's Prime Minister Shinzo Abe recently attended a screening of the film in L.A., and that appearance along with North Korean saber rattling and nuclear missile tests have succeeded stirring up interest in the film in the East and the West.
"There's definitely more interest in the subject these days. [The story] was even picked up by Anderson Cooper," Sheridan said. "And we didn't make the film for a Japanese audience, we made it for a Western audience - we knew that they were already intimately familiar with the story and might not be as interested. But tons of Japanese media called asking us when we were going to screen it over there, and we showed it, and we were immediately picked up for distribution."
Sheridan said that Japanese media swarmed the screenings of the film in Japan. The film will be shown in 20 cities all over Japan on November 25.
"ABDUCTION" will screen at the Austin Film Festival Saturday, Oct. 25 at 5 p.m.
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