At a glamorous ceremony in the Japanese capital on Wednesday night, the major award categories for the Tokyo International Film Festival were announced, and Yoshida Daihachi’s Teki Cometh emerged as the clear winner.
The Tokyo Grand Prix, the festival’s top prize, was won by Teki Cometh, a feature version of a book by renowned Japanese novelist Tsutsui Yasutaka. Yoshida also took home the best director award, and star Nagatsuka Kyozo took home the best actor award. A retired professor of French literature (Nagatsuka) offers occasional guest lectures and arranges his own demise according to when his money would run out in this contemplative picture with monochromatic photography. Former pupils and friends pay a visit. He meets Yumi Kawai, a charming young student of French literature, during one of his infrequent outings.
Adios Al Amigo, a spaghetti western directed by Ivan D. Gaona and set in 1902 at the close of the Thousand Days War, won the festival’s special jury prize. The film is about a revolutionary soldier who gets a telegram informing him that his brother’s wife is pregnant. The soldier then persuades a hobbyist photographer to accompany him on his search for his brother, and the two of them run into a number of dubious characters along the way.
The winner of the best actress award was Anamaria Vartolomei, who starred in the Romanian drama Traffic, directed by Teodora Ana Mihai. Vartolomei plays one half of a Romanian couple who relocate to Rotterdam in search of a better life, only to end up on the periphery of Western European culture in the movie, which is based on a true story. The pair, who are quite impoverished, subsequently become involved in a scheme to steal art.
Chinese filmmaker Lina Yang’s Big World won the festival’s audience prize, which was chosen by a popular vote of the general public. In the film, a courageous man with cerebral palsy overcomes his disability to assist his grandmother in fulfilling her ambition of staging a play.
Below is the complete list of winners
Grand Prix/The Governor of Tokyo Award
Teki Cometh
Special Jury Prize
Adios Al Amigo
Best Director
Yoshida Daihachi (Teki Cometh)
Best Actor
Nagatsuka Kyozo (Teki Cometh)
Best Actress
Anamaria Vartolomei (Traffic)
Award for Best Artistic Contribution
My Friend An Delie
Audience Award
Big World
Asian Future Best Film Award
Apollon by Day Athena by Night
Kurosawa Akira Award
Miyake Sho and Fu Tien-yu
37th TIFF Lifetime Achievement Award
Bela Tarr
TIFF Ethical Film Award
Dahomey