The Tokyo FILMeX festival (Nov20-28) has announced its line-up for its fifth edition, with a competitionsection presenting ten features from young Asian directors.

The festival's opening film will be Japanesedirector Akihiko Shinota's Canary, which receives its world premiere atTokyo FILMeX. The director of Harmful Insect, Shiota's latest featuredepicts the story of children who are brainwashed by a religious cult. Theclosing film is Canadian director Guy Maddin's Dracula: Pages from a Virgin'sDiary.

Among the competition titles makingtheir feature debuts are Lebanese director Danielle Arbid with In TheBattlefields, about the 1983 war in Lebanon, and Indian director Partho SenGupta's Let The Wind Blow, a story of new generation Indian youth in Bombay.

Some of the previous FILMeX prizewinners making their comeback to this year's edition are Thailand's ApichatpongWeerasethakul with this year's Cannes special jury prize winner TropicalMalady, Korea's Song II-gon with Spider Forest and Iran's HassanYektapanah with Story Undone.

Also in the competition is Japanesedirector Go Shibata's second feature Late Bloomer, a story about twistedrelationship between a disabled man and his caretaker, China's Zhu Wen's SouthOf The Clouds, Israel's Raphael Nadjari's Avanim, Iran's BahmanGhobadi's Turtles Also Fly and Iran's Marziyeh Meshkini's Stray Dog.

The jury members are Japanese filmhistorian Donald Richie, former Rotterdam festival director Simon Field, Japanesedocumentary director Sumiko Haneda, Korean actress Moon So-ri and Canadian filmscholar James Quandt.