Tokyo International Film Festival (TIFF) will honour Japanese filmmaker Sho Miyake and Taiwanese director Fu Tien-yu with the Kurosawa Akira Award at its upcoming 37th edition (October 28 to November 6).
The award is presented to filmmakers who have “made waves in cinema and are expected to help guide the industry’s future”. A ceremony to present the awards will be held at the Imperial Hotel Tokyo on November 5.
Miyake, whose 2012 directorial debut Playback played in competition at the Locarno Film Festival, won praise from the selection committee for his recent humanist films Small, Slow But Steady and All The Long Nights, which screened at the Berlinale in 2022 and 2024 respecitvely.
Fu began her career as a novelist before making her directorial debut with Somewhere I Have Never Travelled in 2009. Her most recent film, Day Off picked up awards at Osaka Asian Film Festival, Golden Horse Film Festival and Udine’s Far East Film Festival in 2023. The committee cited Fu as continuing the traditions of Taiwan New Cinema.
The 2024 selection committee members comprised director Yoji Yamada, casting director Yoko Narahashi, critic Saburo Kawamoto and TIFF programming director Shozo Ichiyama.
The Kurosawa Akira Award was revived by the festival in 2022 after an absence of 14 years.
TIFF has also revealed that the jury for its Ethical Film Award will be helmed by actor and director Takumi Saitoh. The award, established last year, will be presented to a film that “raises awareness of social issues such as the environment, poverty and discrimination and understanding of diversity”. In 2023, the award went to Estibaliz Urresola Solaguren’s 20,000 Species of Bees.
Saitoh is known for his performances in Shin Ultraman and The Queen of Villains. His sophomore film as director, Home Sweet Home, debuted at last year’s Shanghai International Film Festival. Saitoh is also known for volunteer activities such as running a mobile cinema for disaster areas and setting up daycare facilities on film sets.
In addition, TIFF has announced its second annual International Symposium on Film Education, in which panellists from around the world discuss how film education contributes to societies facing problems such as war, poverty and refugee crises. It will take place on November 2 at the National Film Archive of Japan.
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