The film shows angry confrontations between residents and the lead activist, Ric O'Barry, who in the 1960s trained dolphins for the US hit television show "Flipper" but now argues the animals should be free to roam the oceans.

The film won numerous international prizes, including the Sundance Festival's audience award, and last month led the Australian city of Broome to announce it would cancel it sister-city relationship with Taiji.

"Dolphins are a large-brain creature," O'Barry, 69, told AFP during a recent return visit to Japan. "They are highly intelligent, they are self-aware, like gorillas and humans. I nursed them, I watched them give birth.

"And for me, to kill them, is extremely, extremely..." He paused, then simply added: "I don't see the purpose."

In Taiji, where about 3,700 people live, the global uproar stirred by "The Cove" has met with equal incomprehension -- and anger.
Amid the raging controversy, Taiji's fishermen started their annual hunt Wednesday, catc