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When “The Cove” won the Oscar for best documentary feature Sunday night, it may not have been the biggest win in the past week for South Florida dolphin specialist Ric O’Barry, the former “Flipper” trainer who organized the disturbing film about dolphin slaughter in Taiji, Japan.

Perhaps the more important victory came from the film’s distributor, which told Reuters that the film soon will be screened in theaters across Japan for the first time. Takeshi Kato, of the distribution company Unplugged, said Thursday that he has arranged to show “The Cove” in five theaters in major Japanese cities in May or June, with plans to expand to about 20 screens.

“The Cove,” shot secretively over the course of three years, shows Japanese fishermen in an annual, months-long process of herding thousands of dolphins into an isolated cove. Some animals are removed to be exported to marine mammal exhibits around the globe. The rest are stabbed with spears, their meat sold for food in Japan.

“When the film is seen in Japan, it will shut ‘the cove’ down permanently,” O’Barry, a Coconut Grove resident and marine mammal specialist for the nonprofit environmental group Earth Island Institute, told Reuters.

The crew for the documentary, directed by famed photographer Louie Psihoyos, included Fort Lauderdale residents Simon Hutchins, the expedition director, and marine technician Greg “Moondog” Mooney. It was financed by Netscape founder and Palm Beach resident Jim Clark, whose only edict for O’Barry was: “Make a difference.”