Australian auteur Rolf de Heer will preside over the international competition jury at the 39th Tokyo International Film Festival.
The veteran director of Ten Canoes and Charlie’s Country will help select the winners of the Tokyo Grand Prix, special jury prize, best director, actor and actress, and artistic contribution. His fellow jury members have yet to be revealed and the competition titles will be announced on October 1.
Last year, 15 titles vied for the awards – worth nearly $30,000 (¥4.7m) – with Annemarie Jacir’s Palestine 36 winning the top prize.
This year, the festival’s World Focus section will feature an Australia Spotlight, showcasing cinema from the country and presented in cooperation with the Australian Embassy in Japan. It will include De Heer’s most recent film, The Survival Of Kindness, which played in competition at the 2023 Berlinale.
Born in the Netherlands, De Heer migrated to Sydney with his family aged eight and is now based in Tasmania.
After early works including 1991’s Dingo, starring Colin Friels and jazz legend Miles Davis, his 1993 crime comedy-drama Bad Boy Bubby was selected for Venice, where it won the special jury prize and Fipresci prize. He returned to the Lido in 2002 with The Tracker, which screened in Competition and marked his first collaboration with esteemed Australian Aboriginal actor David Gulpilil.
De Heer has played in Competition at Cannes twice, with 1996’s The Quiet Room and 1998’s Dance Me To My Song, and won the Un Certain Regard special jury prize in 2006 with Ten Canoes. He returned to the Croisette in 2014 with Charlie’s Country, which also played in Un Certain Regard and saw Gulpilil win best actor. Both Ten Canoes and Charlie’s Country were submitted by Australia to the international feature film category of the Oscars.
De Heer’s psychological thriller Alexandra’s Project was in Competition at the Berlinale in 2003 and he returned to the festival a decade later with The Survival Of Kindness, which won the Fipresci prize.
Speaking of his TIFF appointment, De Heer said: “For any of us attending the Tokyo International Film Festival, it is a privilege. For me, as a filmmaker, it is even more so. The more films I manage to make, the fewer films I manage to see, especially on the big screen.
“But as a part of this jury, I have the duty, the obligation, to see at least 15 films and talk about them with other filmmakers. And not just any old 15 films, but the 15 films in Competition, drawn from films made all over the world by all sorts of extraordinary filmmakers. And to do this in a city that plays host to one of the most formidable film cultures in the world. Can life ever get much better than this?”
This year’s TIFF is set to open with the world premiere of musical drama Sukiyaki and close with Korean zombie blockbuster Colony with monster sequel Godzilla Minus Zero as the Centrepiece feature.
TIFF will take place from October 26 to November 4.
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