Other winners include The Woodsman And The Rain, Play, Albert Nobbs, Kora and When Pigs Have Wings.

Eric Toledano and Olivier Nakache’s Untouchable won the Tokyo Sakura grand prix and $50,000 at today’s closing awards ceremony of the 24th edition of the Tokyo International Film Festival (TIFF).

The French-language drama also won two best actor awards for its co-stars, Françoise Cluzet and Omar Sy, who play a quadriplegic aristocrat and his streetwise caregiver respectively. Japanese distribution has yet to be announced but both the directors and cast members, unable to attend the ceremony, mentioned a trip to Japan in the coming months in a recorded message.

The special jury prize and $20,000 was awarded to lone Japanese competition entry The Woodsman And The Rain (Kitsutsuki To Ame), directed by Shuichi Okita. Screening as a world premiere, the film opens theatrically on February 11 through distributor Kadokawa.

The best director prize was won by Ruben Östlund for Swedish social drama Play, one of several competition titles to tackle issues of immigration and cultural barriers.

Glenn Close won best actress for her gender crossing role in Irish period drama Albert Nobbs. She thanked the festival in a personal video message. The film will be released Stateside by Roadside Attractions on January 27.

Chinese world premiere Kora shared a best artistic contribution prize with British director Tony Kaye’s high school drama Detachment. Filmed in China and Tibet, Kora will compete for prizes at next month’s Golden Horse awards.

Sylvain Estibal’s directorial debut When Pigs Have Wings picked up the audience award and $10,000 following a sold-out screening as the festival’s final competition screening on Saturday night. Lead actor Sasson Gabai starred in 2007 TIFF grand prize winner The Band’s Visit.

The competition jury, led by US producer Edward R. Pressman along with producer Kees Kasander, actress Fan Bingbing, director Masahiro Kobayashi, and special effects makeup artist Reiko Kruk, spoke of the difficulty of selecting winners, with almost none of the decisions unanimous.

Keiichi Kobayashi’s black and white drama About The Pink Sky (Momoiro Sora Wo) garnered the Japanese Eyes best picture award.The best Asian-Middle Eastern film award was given to Filipino drama Trespassers, screened as part of a program featuring 2011 Cinemalaya award winners. Special mentions went to Indonesian director Kamila Andini’s The Mirror Never Lies, which also won the Toyota Earth grand prix, Eric Khoo’s Tatsumi and Bollywood spectacular The Robot. Siberian documentary Happy People: A Year In The Taiga, produced by Werner Herzog, won the Earth Grand Prix special jury prize.

TIFF audience admissions totaled 41,648, slightly down from 41,862 last year while the number of screenings increased to 315 from 275. Total visitors to TIFF, the TIFFCOM market and other CoFesta events increased 28% to 172,231 from 134,094 in 2010.

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