Tokyo film festival reveals lineup with world premieres from Chong Keat Aun, Rithy Panh, Amos Gitai

Tokyo International Film Festival (TIFF, Oct 28-Nov 5) has revealed the full lineup for its 38th edition, including world premieres from Chong Keat Aun, Rithy Panh, Amos Gitai and Zhang Lu.

The festival will screen 183 films - down from 209 in 2024 - and includes a 15-strong Competition section, of which eight are world premieres.

These include Mother Bhumi from Malaysia’s Chong Keat Aun, which stars Fan Bingbing as a widow who works the fields by day and uses magic to save villagers by night, while learning the truth behind her husband’s death. Chong previously directed Snow In Midsummer, which premiered at Venice last year before going on to win a string of festival awards.

Cannes and Berlinale award-winner Rithy Panh will compete at TIFF with We Are The Fruits Of The Forest, a documentary that spans four years in Cambodia’s northern mountainous regions where ethnic minorities maintain a traditional lifestyle, coexisting with nature.

Israeli filmmaker Gitai, a regular in competition at Cannes, Venice and Berlin, will world premiere Golem In Pompei in Tokyo. The French production documents Gitai’s play Golem at the ancient theatre in Pompeii, combined with fictional scenes.

Chinese filmmaker Zhang, who won best film at Busan last week with Gloaming In Luomu, reunites with actress Baihe Bai for Mothertongue. It follows a struggling actress who returns to her hometown in Sichuan and is confused by the fact that she can no longer speak her native dialect.

Also set to debut in Competition are two films from Japan: Yuichiro Sakashita’s Blonde, about a teacher caught up in a scandal; and Ryutaro Nakagawa’s Echoes Of Motherland, which stars acclaimed Japanese director Naomi Kawase. Sakashita is also set to world premiere body-swap feature Can’t Cry With Your Face in the Gala section of the festival.

Family drama Maria Vitoria from Portugal’s Mario Patrocinio and Take Off by China’s Pengfei will also bow in Competition at TIFF.

The main competition jury is led by Carlo Chatrian, a former festival director at the Berlinale and Locarno. He will be joined by Asia-based French editor Matthieu Laclau, Chinese filmmaker Vivian Qu, Japanese actor Takumi Saito and Taiwanese actress Gwei Lun-Mei.

Asian Future

The Asian Future competition, for rising Asian filmmakers who have directed up to three films, comprises 10 films, all world premieres. These include Ken Kawai’s The Chatterboxes, which features Japanese Sign Language and Kurdish among its languages; and Mika Imai’s Kiioriko, which also features Deaf characters and was shot with Deaf cast and crew from Japan and Taiwan.

The section will open with Mizuho Terasaki’s Journey Into Sato Tadao, a documentary about the titular film critic, who has more than 150 published works to his name.

At a press conference to unveil the selection on October 1, Asian Future programmer Kenji Ishizaka noted strong entries from Middle Eastern countries this year, including two from Iran and one from Turkey.

The Asian Future jury includes Asian Contents & Film Market (ACFM) director Ellen YD Kim, director Daishi Matsunaga, and Tokyo Theatres programming director Akihiro Nishizawa.

The World Focus section will feature Kelly Reichardt’s The Mastermind, which premiered at Cannes, Vietnam war feature Tunnels: Sun In The Dark by director Bui Thac Chuyen, whose Glorious Ashes played in Competition at Tokyo in 2022, and subsections focusing on Taiwan, Brazil, and French-speaking Belgium, as well as the annual Latin Beat subsection.

As previously reported, the festival will open with Junji Sakamoto’s Climbing For Life, which stars Sayuri Yoshinaga as Junko Tabei, the first woman summit Everest. The festival’s closing film is Chloe Zhao’s Hamnet, which won the People’s Choice Award at Toronto, while its centrepiece film is Yoji Yamada’s Tokyo Taxi, a remake of French feature Driving Madeleine.

Also previously announced was the Gala selection, which includes Ari Aster’s Eddington, Hikari’s Rental Family (which filmed in Japan), Peter Ho-sun Chan’s She Has No Name and Juno Mak’s Sons Of The Neon Night.

TIFF Lounge will include a discussion between Tokyo Taxi director Yoji Yamada and Lee Sang-il, the director of Kokuho, the highest-grossing live-action Japanese film in decades.

Industry market TIFFCOM will run alongside the festival from October 29-31 and will include the third edition of Tokyo Story Market, which has been renamed Tokyo IP Market: Adaptation & Remake.

The 38th TIFF marks four years since a significant shakeup for the festival, in which the venue was moved from Roppongi to the Hibiya-Ginza area and former Tokyo Filmex programmer Shozo Ichiyama came on as programming head.