AI Within by Japan’s Shion Koreeda scooped the MPA Grand Prize at the MPA/DHU/TIFFCOM Pitching Contest on Friday (November 1).
The event, which took place as part of the TIFFCOM market that runs alongside Tokyo International Film Festival, also awarded a special recognition prize to Kazuya Maruyama’s The Right Place and the judges’ special award to Shun Tsujii’s 2 Years And 2 Months. The contest aims to support young filmmakers looking to take their first steps into the international film industry.
AI Within follows a female detective with a personal grudge against artificial intelligence (AI) who is sent in to investigate when a deep-fake scam defrauds a company of $6.5m (¥1bn).
The MPA Grand Prize winner is awarded a study trip to the Global Film and Television Immersion Course in Los Angeles, supplied by the Motion Picture Association (MPA), to be held in November 2025.
The special recognition prize winner is invited to the Asia Pacific Screen Awards in Australia. Tsujii, as the judges’ special award winner, receives the opportunity to pitch at Udine’s Far East Film Festival in Italy next spring.
Now in its seventh year, the event was co-hosted by the MPA, Digital Hollywood University (DHU) and TIFFCOM and comprised two sessions. The first was a masterclass seminar led by Alex Boden, producer of Tokyo Vice.
The second part was the pitching contest. Five young filmmakers selected from a public call for entries and two top performers from the 2024 KAFA-TUA collaboration film development workshop - a joint project development workshop for art universities in Japan and Korea, organised by the Agency for Cultural Affairs - competed in the contest. The winners were selected by jurors.
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