The Tokyo International Film Festival (TIFF) opened on Monday, October 26, under driving rain that covered its red carpet with a constellation of transparent umbrellas. This 39th edition comes after the event was admitted in March into the closed club of so-called category A festivals, alongside Cannes, Venice, Berlin and Locarno. Organisers now position the TIFF neck-and-neck with Busan in South Korea, seeking to make it not only the showcase of Japanese cinema but also the main launch window for pan-Asian productions.
After the Covid-19 pandemic years, the festival has redeployed into the upscale triangle of Hibiya, Yurakucho and Ginza, a business district and a genuine slice of vertical city where screening rooms are reached by lift. At the heart of the area sits Godzilla Square, dominated by a statue of the iconic monster, opportunely brought back into the spotlight by an event screening of the blockbuster Godzilla Minus Zero a few days before its Japanese release on November 4.
Since April, the festival has also had a new director, Takeo Hisamatsu, an industry figure with past experience at the head of Shochiku and of the Japanese subsidiary of Warner Bros. At TIFFCOM, the market linked to the festival, numerous French distributors and publishers were again present this year, with France known as an outlet particularly keen on local productions.
The programming reflected the different facets of Japanese film production, with several recurring themes, including the crisis of the family model and the difficulty of relating to others.
The event thus displays both cultural and financial ambitions, combining its new category A standing and its pan-Asian launch role with a market that continues to draw international distributors, including from France.
Sources: Le Monde Culture.