Kenny Oiwa Riches on "Mouse," Catfishing, and Making a Movie with Mom
The International Examiner's latest issue (Vol. 53, No. 5) features a profile of filmmaker and actor Kenny Oiwa Riches, whose film "Mouse" screens at SAAFF 2026.
"Mouse" follows Denny, a mixed-race loner living with his Japanese mother in Salt Lake City. Working dead-end jobs and envying the lives of people around him, Denny gets pulled into a world of scammers after connecting with a woman through a pen pal service. It's dark, it's funny, and it draws from a real experience. Kenny was actually catfished by someone he'd been friends with for years but never met in person, and that encounter became the seed for the film.
What makes "Mouse" especially personal is the casting. Kenny's real-life mother, Hiroko Oiwa Riches, plays Denny's mom on screen. It's her first acting role, and she initially turned it down. But Hiroko brings something to the film that no one else could, performing entirely in Japanese and grounding the story in a lived, cross-cultural family dynamic that feels completely real.
Kenny grew up navigating a mixed-race identity in Utah, attending Buddhist temples and Japanese restaurants with his mother while moving between cultural worlds that didn't always have a clear space for him. That tension runs through "Mouse" in ways that are both specific and deeply relatable.
Read the full profile by Yayoi Lena Winfrey in the International Examiner's May 2026 issue, available in print and through their digital archives.
Originally published in the International Examiner, Vol. 53, No. 5 (May 6 - June 2, 2026). Article by Yayoi Lena Winfrey
