Tak­ing stock of Japan­ese cin­e­ma at Tokyo Inter­na­tion­al Film Festival

I should start this dis­patch with a con­fes­sion of my bias: Tokyo is one of my favourite cities in the world. I first vis­it­ed on a solo trip in 2019, and have spent every year since sav­ing to go back. I actu­al­ly was there for four days in April of this year with my sis­ter on hol­i­day, but when the Tokyo Inter­na­tion­al Film Fes­ti­val invit­ed Lit­tle White Lies to vis­it for their 37^th edi­tion in Novem­ber, no 14-hour plane jour­ney was going to stand in my way. A daz­zling metrop­o­lis that seems to dwarf Lon­don in scale, ambi­tion, tech­nol­o­gy, and hos­pi­tal­i­ty, Tokyo is a dream loca­tion for a film fes­ti­val, par­tic­u­lar­ly con­sid­er­ing the impact of Japan­ese cin­e­ma on the glob­al film stage.

Yet the Tokyo Inter­na­tion­al Film Fes­ti­val might not be an event that audi­ences out­side of the city’s engaged movie-lov­ing com­mu­ni­ty are famil­iar with. Found­ed in 1985, it’s cer­tain­ly wel­comed some high-pro­file guests to the cap­i­tal, includ­ing Gre­go­ry Peck, Nor­man Jew­i­son, Tom­my Lee Jones and Wim Wen­ders who all served as pre­vi­ous jury pres­i­dents. This year Tony Leung presided over the com­pe­ti­tion delib­er­a­tions, while leg­ends includ­ing John­nie To and Kiyoshi Kura­sawa dropped in for mas­ter­class­es, as the fes­ti­val held its sec­ond edi­tion post-Covid. Based in a hand­ful of cin­e­mas locat­ed in the city’s upmar­ket Gin­za dis­trict, it’s a notably con­ve­nient city fes­ti­val – the venues are all with­in a 10-minute walk of each oth­er – and its late sched­ul­ing in the glob­al release cal­en­dar means the pro­gram­ming team ben­e­fit from being able to screen some fes­ti­val favourites from around the world.

This year, big-tick­et galas includ­ed Pedro Almodóvar’s The Room Next Door, Jesse Eisenberg’s A Real Pain and Mati Diop’s Dahomey, with the world pre­mière of Shi­raishi Kazuya’s samu­rai epic 11 Rebels open­ing the fes­ti­val. For the sake of find­ing a way to con­dense my fes­ti­val into four days, I opt­ed to con­cen­trate on the Japan­ese films across the pro­gramme, which were most­ly found with­in the ​‘Nip­pon Cin­e­ma Now’ and ​‘Asian Futures’ strands, with the excep­tion of Teki Cometh, Yoshi­da Daihachi’s eerie black-and-white dra­ma which played in com­pe­ti­tion (and swept the board).

Teki Cometh was by far my favourite film I saw at the fes­ti­val – adapt­ed from Tsut­sui Yasutaka’s nov­el of the same name, it’s a haunt­ing char­ac­ter study cen­tred on 77-year-old retiree Gisuke Watan­abe, who spends his days cook­ing, clean­ing and writ­ing, con­tent by the rel­a­tive soli­tude and occa­sion­al social com­mit­ments he has with friends and ex-pupils. What starts as a seem­ing­ly warm por­trait of old age quick­ly becomes some­thing stranger and more inter­est­ing as Gisuke is warned by mys­te­ri­ous emails of an approach­ing ene­my. It’s no sur­prise that the fes­ti­val jury were so tak­en with the film, but it’s par­tic­u­lar­ly pleas­ing to see a Japan­ese fea­ture win the Tokyo Grand Prix, which hasn’t hap­pened since 2005.

The oth­er Japan­ese films in the main com­pe­ti­tion were Ohku Akiko’s She Taught Me Serendip­i­ty, which proved to be a sweet roman­tic dra­ma about class­mates who fall in love only to expe­ri­ence the inevitable hard­ships that come with romance, and Kataya­ma Shinzo’s sur­re­al erot­ic dra­ma Lust in the Rain, about a love tri­an­gle in 1940s Japan. But there was plen­ty more Japan­ese tal­ent across the festival’s offer­ings, notably in Adachi Mojiri’s The Har­bour Lights, about a third-gen­er­a­tion Kore­an immi­grant strug­gling with her sense of place and iden­ti­ty in Kobe, and in Morii Yusuke’s Route29, about an iso­lat­ed clean­er who ends up on a dis­as­trous road trip with the 12-year-old girl she’s sup­posed to be retriev­ing. Across the fes­ti­val Japan­ese cin­e­ma had a strong pres­ence, though not in the names that many non-Japan­ese audi­ences would recog­nise. It was a rare treat to be able to watch so many films which are sad­ly unlike­ly to be shown out­side their native coun­try – and high­lights the pos­si­bil­i­ties around the world for greater co-pro­gram­ming, where­by fes­ti­vals and dis­trib­u­tors could part­ner up to help films reach wider audi­ences and there­by bring film­mak­ers to entire­ly new audiences.

After all, this is the pur­pose of film fes­ti­vals in my eyes – although the likes of Cannes, Venice and Toron­to are world-famous and pro­vide launch plat­forms for many film­mak­ers, they are still large­ly inac­ces­si­ble and region­al in their pro­gram­ming. There is an entire glob­al net­work of small­er fes­ti­vals around the world that speak direct­ly to film lovers out­side that lim­it­ed bub­ble, and now more than ever, it feels like fos­ter­ing inter­na­tion­al exchange and col­lab­o­ra­tion is the key to not only fes­ti­val suc­cess but build­ing a bet­ter inter­na­tion­al film com­mu­ni­ty. Being wel­comed so enthu­si­as­ti­cal­ly in Tokyo proves that lan­guage is lit­tle bar­ri­er to this. Unit­ed by a love of cin­e­ma (and thanks to the efforts of the incred­i­bly tal­ent­ed sub­ti­tlers and trans­la­tors who make TIFF pos­si­ble for those who don’t speak Japan­ese) it was an hon­our to meet the fes­ti­val team them­selves and some of the many guests from across Japan and Asia who had trav­elled to the city for the festival.

Out­side of the cin­e­ma screens, it goes with­out say­ing that Tokyo is a film lover’s par­adise. Beyond the famous Ghi­b­li Muse­um (which I couldn’t get a tick­et for) there is no short­age of ways for trav­ellers to enter­tain them­selves, from a walk­ing tour of Shibuya’s Tokyo Toi­lets (as seen in Per­fect Days) to a trip to Vin­tage Jin­bo­cho, a shop packed floor-to-ceil­ing with Japan­ese posters, pam­phlets and oth­er cin­e­ma para­pher­na­lia (I snagged a large orig­i­nal Mul­hol­land Dri­ve poster for £50).

If you are plan­ning on mak­ing a trip to Tokyo, it can be easy to opt for April’s cher­ry blos­som sea­son, giv­en the pleas­ant weath­er and stun­ning sights of pink blooms caught in the wind. But the autum­nal skies of late Octo­ber – when TIFF takes place – is an equal­ly allur­ing option, espe­cial­ly when you con­sid­er the wealth of sen­to (pub­lic baths more akin to UK spas) in the city. The fact that you could time your trip to fit in some of the Tokyo Inter­na­tion­al Film Fes­ti­val should be a big plus; this rel­a­tive­ly young fes­ti­val with big ambi­tions and a keen, wel­com­ing team of staff (plus Eng­lish sub­ti­tles for most screen­ings!) seems set to grow in the future.