Paul Greengrass’ Captain Phillips to open Tokyo film festival

TIFF runs Oct 17-25 with its base in the Roppongi Hills complex and the TIFFCOM market Oct 22-24 in Odaiba.

Based on a true story about a US container ship hijacked by Somali pirates, Captain Phillips is set to receive its world premiere at the New York Film Festival on Sept 27.

Sony Pictures will release it in Japan on Nov 29.

TIFF will close with writer/director Koki Mitani’s long-awaited sixth feature, The Kiyosu Conference. Based on Mitani’s novel of the same title, the historical epic stars Koji Yakusho.

Toho will release the film locally Nov 9.

The festival also announced the launch of Japanese Cinema Splash, which has grown out of the Japanese Eyes section of previous years. The new section aims to showcase Japanese independent films including animation, from directors in all stages of their careers, to the local public as well as international film festival programmers, press and buyers.

Japanese Cinema Splash along with the newly established Asian Future and “renewed” World Focus sections (both of which were previously announced at Cannes) is part of new director general of TIFF & TIFFCOM Yasushi Shiina’s initiative to meet two goals:

“First is that the overseas creators will assemble and come to Tokyo. Secondly to provide an opportunity for the Japanese film lovers to view the films that have not yet been released in Japan especially the outstanding ones, and also to see the brand new films that will be released towards end of the year.”

He added that TIFF is hoping to “create a platform for disseminating” Asian and Japanese contents globally.

TIFF’s Festival Muse this year is Chiaki Kuriyama, best known for her performance as Gogo Yubari in Quentin Tarantino’s Kill Bill, Volume 1.

The festival will announce its full line-up on Sept 19.