Tokyo International Film Festival (TIFF) is to honour Mexican director Alejandro Gonzalez Inarritu and Japanese filmmaker Koji Fukada with its Kurosawa Akira Award and give its Lifetime Achievement Award to Kurosawa collaborator Nogami Teruyo.
It marks the first time the Kurosawa Akira Award will have been given in 14 years and is presented to filmmakers who are making extraordinary contributions to world cinema and are expected to help define the film industry’s future. Past recipients include Steven Spielberg, Yamada Yoji and Hou Hsiao Hsien.
The selection committee was made up of Yamada, Nakadai Tatsuya, Harada Mieko, Kawamoto Saburo and TIFF programming director Ichiyama Shozo.
Oscar-winning director Inarritu’s latest film, Bardo, False Chronicle Of A Handful Of Truths, which premiered in this year’s Venice competition, will screen in the Gala Selection of the 35th TIFF, which runs from October 24 to November 2.
Fukada’s latest film, Love Life, also screened in Venice’s competition this year. The selection committee members praised his films, which include Cannes 2016 Un Certain Regard jury prize winner Harmonium, as those of a young Japanese director with a promising future.
They also took into consideration “his energetic contributions to the industry beyond filmmaking” – such as launching the Mini Theater Aid initiative with fellow directors like Ryusuke Hamaguchi, in order to prevent the financial collapse of arthouse theatres during the pandemic.
Lifetime Achievement
The festival will also honour Nogami with the Lifetime Achievement Award in recognition of her extraordinary career and contributions to Japanese cinema.
She is best known for having worked with acclaimed auteur Kurosawa, beginning with Rashomon in 1950 and participating in all his subsequent films including Seven Samurai (1954) and Ran (1985) - with the exception of The Idiot in 1951 – serving as a script supervisor and production manager.
She later worked on Koizumi Takashi’s After The Rain (2000) and Letters From The Mountains (2002) as the director’s assistant.
In 1984, Requiem For My Father, a documentary about her childhood, won the Yomiuri Women’s Human Documentary Excellence Award and Yoji Yamada adapted the story to make Kabei: Our Mother in 2008.
She is also author of books such as Waiting On The Weather: Making Movies With Akira Kurosawa.
The Kurosawa Akira Award ceremony will be held on October 29 at Tokyo’s Imperial Hotel while the Lifetime Achievement Award will be given at TIFF’s closing ceremony along with other awards on November 2.
No comments yet