Tokyo Film Festival’s Full Lineup Is Long on China, Animation and Marcello Mastroianni

The Tokyo International Film Festival has unveiled a competition section with as many Chinese titles as Japanese for its 37th edition.

Announced on Wednesday the festival’s full lineup runs to a compact 110 films, culled from a huge 2,023 applications, and functions partly as discovery event, partly as a Japanese showcase and also as best-of the year international art house compendium.

The 15-title competition includes Mizi Z’s “The Unseen Sister,” “Big World,” by Yang Lina and “My Friend An Delie,” by Dong Zijian from China. Adding rising star Hong Kong director Philip Yung’s “Papa” and Huang Xi’s Sylvia Chang-starring “Daughter’s Daughter,” fresh from Toronto, and the competition will resound to Chinese accents. From Japan comes “She taught Me Serendipity,” by Ohku Akiko, “Teki Cometh,” by Yoshida Daihachi and “Lust in the Rain,” which is a Japan-Taiwan coproduction directed by Katayama Shinzo.

Other competition selections include “The Englishman’s Papers,” by Portugal’s Serggio Graciano, Brazil’s Marco Dutra with “Bury Your Dead” and “In His Own Image,” by France’s Thierry de Peretti.

The Asian Future section comprises ten world premieres of rising talents. It includes “Pavane for an Infant,” by Malaysia’s Chong Keat Aun (“Snowfall in Summer”), “Sima’s Song,” by Afghanistan’s Roya Sadat and “The Bora,” by Iran’s Mohammad Esmaeilie. Two other titles appear to be Chinese language efforts, but are credited as U.S. origin. They are “The Vessel’s Islw,” by Wang Di, and “Three Castrated Goats,” by Ye Xingyu.

The festival’s selection for gala presentation runs to 13 higher profile Asian and international titles. These include Marielle Heller’s “Nightbitch” which debuted in Toronto, smash hit Hong Kong action film “Twilight of the Warriors: Walled In,” Chinese director Guan Hu’s Cannes comedy-drama “Black Dog: and Eric Khoo’s Japan-set, Catherine Deneuve-starring “Spirit World.”

The 27-title World Focus section comprises ten contemporary titles, selected globally, an Arturo Ripstein retrospective and a trio of Nanni Moretti pictures and a five-film look-back at Italian actor Marcello Mastroianni. (His daughter Chiara Mastroianni has been previously announced as a member of the festival’s competition jury this year.) A late addition was “The Room Next Door” by Pedro Almodóvar.

The festival’s animation section looks strong on paper. It includes: “Ghost Cat Anzu,” by Kuno Yoko and Yamashita Nobuhiro; Chris Sanders’ “The Wild Robot”; Gints Zilbalodis’s “Flow”; and Adam Elliot’s “Memoir of a Snail,” all of which are performing on the international festival circuit. Japanese animation includes the world premiere of “Make a Girl,” by Yasuda Gensho, “Toto Chan: The Movie The Little Girl at the Window,” by Yakuwa Shinnosuke and a 4K restoration of Masuda Toshio’s 1977 “Space Battleship Yamato.”

The newly launched Female Empowerment section runs to nine titles including “IVO,” by Eva Trobisch, “My Favourite Cake,” by Maryam Moghaddam and Behtash Sanaeeha, and a world premiere of Doctor-X The Movie,” by Tamura Naoki. It also includes “Women Make Films – The Tokyo International Women’s Film Festival” by Kumagai Hiroko.

The three-title TIFF series section comprises “The Dogs of Karma,” by Japan’s Shiraishi Koji, Rodrigo Sorogoyen and Sandra Romero’s “The New Years” and Jean-Luc Godard-focus “Scénarios & Exposé du film annonce du film ‘Scénario’.”

It has been previously announced that historical action film “11 Rebels” is set as the festival’s opening night title. The festival runs from Oct. 28 to Nov. 6 in the Hibiya-Yurakucho-Marunouchi-Ginza area.