Tokyo Film Festival to Reassess Global Standing Ahead of 40th Edition

The Tokyo International Film Festival will review its 39th edition once it wraps and reassess its position on the international circuit before its 40th anniversary next year. Festival director Hisamatsu Takeo announced the plan in an interview with Variety.

"I believe the direction we establish through that process will also help define TIFF's course for the next decade, leading up to its 50th edition," Hisamatsu says.

The 39th edition, now under way, has already grown to 204 films, up from 184 last year. Hisamatsu says the expansion reflects a direction the team has begun to set.

Where does Tokyo fit in Asia and the world?

The director frames the reassessment as a question of positioning. "We are somehow in a competitive relationship with the Busan IFF, we're close geographically and our dates are close too," he says. "I think the time has come to re-examine where TIFF should position itself, both within Asia and within the world."

The appeal of festivals such as Cannes and Venice is bound up with their host cities, he adds. Tokyo, in his view, has untapped assets of its own.

"Tokyo has a distinctive appeal of its own: it's a vibrant, multifaceted city where tradition and modernity coexist, and mainstream culture intersects with subculture," he says. "These are qualities we should do more to showcase to the world."

What does this change for Japanese filmmakers?

The festival is organized by UniJapan, which also runs the TIFFCOM market and a set of international promotion and support programs. Hisamatsu, who also serves as UniJapan's executive director, wants those three arms working more closely together and offering more to filmmakers and producers.

Festivals typically do not own the rights to the films they show, so a title's life after Tokyo rests largely with its rights holders and distributors. Even so, Hisamatsu wants UniJapan to do more to help Japanese films that screen and win prizes at the festival take their next step.

Two initiatives point in that direction:

• Nippon Cinema Now, the festival's showcase for Japanese cinema, becomes a competitive section for the first time this year, with two new awards.
• TIFF Work-in-Progress (TIFF-WIP), a new program linking Japanese films still in production with international festivals and industry figures, aiming to raise their profile abroad and open doors to overseas distribution.

A festival, Hisamatsu says, must balance two jobs: bringing foreign films to local audiences and taking local films overseas. He argues the case for pushing Japanese titles abroad is strong right now. Japan was Country of Honor at this year's Cannes Film Market. More than 30 Japanese films played at the Busan International Film Festival. New talent keeps arriving, he says, and the government is backing a policy of support for the content industry as a whole, not just film.

Even festivals billed as international, he says, are "deeply rooted in their respective countries and cultures – a purely global orientation would strip them of that character. That's why I think the 'glocal' perspective will matter more and more."

A mainstream-leaning lineup

This year's marquee slots tilt toward mainstream entertainment, a contrast with the arthouse programming Tokyo is better known for. Zeze Takahisa's "Sukiyaki" opens the festival. Yamazaki Takashi's "Godzilla Minus Zero" serves as the centerpiece. "Train to Busan" director Yeon Sang-ho's "Colony" closes it.

Hisamatsu rejects any reading of the lineup as strategy. "These films were selected on their individual merits from among the candidates we considered," he says. "It wasn't a deliberate strategy to shift the festival's identity in any particular direction."

The review begins once the 39th edition closes. Its outcome will set the festival's positioning through the 40th anniversary and, by Hisamatsu's own account, toward the 50th.