Animator Willie Ito at the 2025 Heart Mountain Pilgrimage.
Photo: Courtesy of Heart Mountain Wyoming Foundation
‘Hello Maggie!’ the animated film adapted from the book by Shigeru Yabu and Willie Ito, who were incarcerated as children during World War II, captured the Best Short Film award at the Tigertail Asian Film Festival in St. Petersburg, Fla., on March 14.
The film’s musical score, by Italian composer Carlo Chiarotti, was also named Best Original Score at the London Movie Awards in February.
‘Hello Maggie!’ which was produced by the Heart Mountain Wyoming Foundation and directed by veteran animator Tony Tarantini, will be screened at two Southern California film festivals from March 27-29. It will be shown at the WonderCon festival at the Anaheim Convention Center and the Films of Remembrance festival in the Tateuchi Democracy Forum in Los Angeles’ Little Tokyo on March 28 and at the Gardena Valley Japanese Cultural Institute on March 29.
Logan Christie, operations director at Heart Mountain, will present the film with Ito and Tarantini at both festivals, as well as meet with potential distributors of the film to a wider audience.
‘Hello Maggie!’ was funded by a grant from the Japanese American Confinement Sites program of the National Park Service and the Heart Mountain Wyoming Foundation.
The Heart Mountain Wyoming Foundation, a Smithsonian Affiliate, preserves the site where some 14,000 Japanese Americans were unjustly incarcerated in Wyoming from 1942-45. Their stories are told within the foundation’s museum, the Heart Mountain Interpretive Center, and its affiliated Mineta-Simpson Institute, located between Cody and Powell.
