As we previously announced, the Tokyo International Film Festival (TIFF) is planning to hold the 38th edition from October 27 through November 5 in the Hibiya-Yurakucho-Marunouchi-Ginza area. TIFF is now open for submissions from April 1 through July 7, 2025 via the festival website. As one of the leading film festivals in Asia, TIFF showcases premieres of films created by established filmmakers as well as outstanding works by up-and-coming directors from around the world, in a variety of sections.

TIFF Triple-Honoree Yoshida Daihachi Wins Best Director; Kurihara Hayato Wins Best Newcomer

The Tokyo International Film Festival (TIFF) and the festival’s affiliated audiovisual content market, TIFFCOM, are pleased to announce their 2025 dates.

Two-Time Winner of AFA Best Actor Award to Meet Audiences in Hong Kong

Top Film Talents including Japanese Filmmakers to Gather and Meet the Hong Kong Audience in Person

Hong Kong/Tokyo (February 19, 2025) — The Asian Film Awards Academy (AFAA) announced today that the AFA Rising Star Awrad will be presented to Japan’s all-round artist, Kōki,.

TIFF Grand Prix Winner Teki Cometh receives 6 nominations, including Best Film and Best Director

Dean Fujioka takes the lead as Ambassador, with Four Youth Ambassadors including Okada Masaki

On November 1, the legendary Hong Kong actor-director-producer-action choreographer Sammo Hung appeared at the 37th Tokyo International Film Festival to lead a Masterclass following a screening of his 2016 film My Beloved Bodyguard. Still brimming with confidence and humor at 72 years old, Hung regaled a captivated audience with stories of his pioneering martial arts films and costars over the past 60 years, with the Masterclass a rare chance for fans to relive history in the making.

The 37th Tokyo International Film Festival Award Winners

Just after the Tokyo International Film Festival announced the lineup for its 37th edition in late September, an email arrived from Alfonso Cuarón, the Oscar®-winning filmmaker of Gravity (2013) and Roma (2018). He said he would be visiting Tokyo during TIFF for the promotion of his Apple TV+ series Disclaimer (2024), and asked if the festival would be interested in screening a little Christmas film he produced. Would they ever! TIFF quickly secured a venue on November 4.

The two recipients of the 37th Tokyo International Film’s Festival Kurosawa Akira Award sat down with the press on November 5, ahead of the official award ceremony at the Imperial Hotel, just steps away from TIFF’s main venue in Hibiya. Miyake Sho of Japan and Fu Tien-yu of Taiwan are both mid-career filmmakers, and have already received attention and awards for their work. But neither imagined they would be honored with the Kurosawa Akira Award, which promotes the renowned auteur’s…

This year again, Tokyo International Film Festival (TIFF) will publish the “TIFF Times” Daily during the festival period from October 28 (Mon.) to November 6 (Wed.) to deliver valuable articles and information about the festival.

Romanian director Teodora Ana Mihai’s Traffic, which had its Asian premiere in the Competition section of the 37th Tokyo International Film Festival, is based on a true story that made world headlines in 2012. During a post-screening Q&A session on November 4, Mihai pointed out that she and her screenwriter, acclaimed director Cristian Mungiu, took many liberties with the original story as related in the press. “It was meant to be very symbolic,” she said. “It uses tragicomedy to reach an audience…

Billed as a Western, Adios Amigo often reminds one of the grimy visual textures of Sergio Leone’s films, and in a late scene, borrows from The Good, the Bad and the Ugly with a tableau that’s usually referred to as a “Mexican standoff.” During a post-screening Q&A session on November 4 at the 37th Tokyo International Film Festival, where the Colombian film is playing in the Competition section, an audience member said that he had bought a ticket expressly because of the movie’s poster,…

Directors Gints Zilbalodis (Flow), Ahn Jae-huun (Gill), Tomás Pichardo-Espaillat (Olivia & the Clouds), and Yoshiura Yasuhiro (Sing a Bit of Harmony) sat down with Animation Programming Advisor Fujitsu Ryota to discuss their careers, perspectives, and joys at the Road to Becoming an Animation Director symposium held on November 4 at the 37th Tokyo International Film Festival.

One of the highlights of the new Women’s Empowerment section, launched with deserved fanfare at the 37th Tokyo International Film Festival, was a full day of screenings and discussions addressing the past, present and future of female filmmakers. Entitled Women Directors Keep Paving the Way and hosted by the Tokyo Metropolitan Government with co-host UNIJAPAN, the symposium attracted a huge crowd and opened up a much-needed dialogue celebrating women’s achievements, considering the ongoing challenges faced by women in film, as…

A select audience of giddy fans were on hand, along with a visibly excited press corps, to meet Paul Mescal, Denzel Washington, Connie Nielsen, and Fred Hechinger and producers Douglas Wick and Lucy Fisher prior to the Centerpiece screening of Gladiator II, the highly anticipated sequel to Ridley Scott’s Oscar-winning sword-and-sandal epic, on November 4 at the 37th Tokyo International Film Festival.

Thierry de Peretti’s fourth feature, In His Own Image, which screened in the Competition section of the 37th Tokyo International Film Festival, attempts to provide an overview of the revolutionary fervor that gripped the French island of Corsica from the 1970s until the dawn of the millennium. Having been colonized by the French, the island has always had a tempestuous relationship with its conqueror, and that simmering pot of resentment boils over several times during the course of the film. According to…

This year again, Tokyo International Film Festival (TIFF) will publish the “TIFF Times” Daily during the festival period from October 28 (Mon.) to November 6 (Wed.) to deliver valuable articles and information about the festival.

Suicide does not eliminate the pain. It is transferred from one to another.

Fresh from winning the Asian Filmmaker of the Year Award at the 29th Busan International Film Festival last month, director Kurosawa Kiyoshi participated in a TIFF Lounge Masterclass at the 37th Tokyo International Film Festival on November 2, as part of the festival’s Asian Film Student Exchange Program. “I’m a lot older than you,” he said as a way of introducing himself to the assembled students. “I’ve been around since the time they made films on film, and I hope…

Over the last decade, film education has become an increasingly important topic for film festivals around the world, as they attempt to cultivate the future of cinema. And no film education is better than actually making a film and watching it on a big screen with your collaborators. Since 2017, the Tokyo International Film Festival has been making that dream come true for selected teenagers with the project Teens Meet Cinema.

The final TIFF Lounge session featured its first female pairing: Indonesian director-producer Nia Dinata (Love for Share, Three Sassy Sisters) and Japanese director Mishima Yukiko (Shape of Red, Voice), who sat down together for a high-spirited chat at the 37th Tokyo International Film Festival on November 3, as part of the conversation series co-presented by The Japan Foundation and TIFF.

Many of the films at the 37th Tokyo International Film Festival tell stories about migrants, which has become an issue worldwide as people move to where there is work and opportunity even at the risk of their own lives. The Slovakian film, Promise, I’ll Be Fine, playing in TIFF’s Competition section, takes a different approach to this issue by focusing on a mountain village where the impoverished residents are sticking it out. First-time director Katarína Gramatová, appearing for a post-screening Q&A session…

This year again, Tokyo International Film Festival (TIFF) will publish the “TIFF Times” Daily during the festival period from October 28 (Mon.) to November 6 (Wed.) to deliver valuable articles and information about the festival.

As many of Japan’s acclaimed animated film directors enter later life, a new generation of directors has emerged, coming not only from animation schools and studios, but from unconventional creative backgrounds producing short films and music videos. Three emerging directors discussed such backgrounds and the challenges of making animated feature films at The New Era of Japanese Animation symposium held on November 1 during the 37th Tokyo International Film Festival.

Stop me if you’ve heard this one: a priest and a murderous cynic walk into a bar… That’s sort of the basic premise of Brazilian director Marco Dutra’s offbeat and purposely convoluted apocalyptic black comedy Bury Your Dead, which screened for the second time on November 2 in the Competition section of the 37th Tokyo International Film Festival. Though Dutra was unable to attend the Asian Premiere of his movie earlier in the week, he was visibly stoked to be taking questions…

After focusing on one of Hong Kong’s foreign domestic helpers in her multiple award-winning 2018 feature debut Still Human, writer-director Chan Oliver Siu Kuen turned the focus closer to home with her new work, Montages of a Modern Motherhood, which received its Japanese premiere on November 2 at the 37th Tokyo International Film Festival. Chan was on hand for the post-screening Q&A session, along with actors Hedwig Tam and Lo Chun Yip.

Originally written in Japanese.

Originally written in Japanese.

Originally written in Japanese.

This year again, Tokyo International Film Festival (TIFF) will publish the “TIFF Times” Daily during the festival period from October 28 (Mon.) to November 6 (Wed.) to deliver valuable articles and information about the festival.

Adilkhan Yerzhanov’s Cadet had its world premiere on November 1 in the Competition section of the 37th Tokyo International Film Festival, and the young Kazakhstani auteur appeared on stage with his stars Anna Starchenko and Sharip Serik for a post-screening Q&A session.