Tokyo International Film Festival Adds Three New Initiatives: Japan Competition, Southeast Asia Section, and Women-in-Cinema Prize
The Tokyo International Film Festival has unveiled three new initiatives: a competitive prize inside its Japanese cinema section, a Southeast Asia-focused programme co-curated with the Japan Foundation, and an award honouring women who have advanced film culture in Japan and internationally. Festival director Hisamatsu Takeo said the Japanese-film competition will "shine a spotlight on exceptional new Japanese talent and introduce them to the world," according to Variety.
The competition sits within Nippon Cinema Now, a section that selects from Japanese films released in the past year and aims to bring them to overseas audiences. It will now hand out a Best Film prize and a Special Jury Prize, judged by a panel combining Japanese and international industry figures. TIFF said the awards are designed to support filmmakers ranging from newcomers to veterans and to connect their work with audiences abroad.
The second new strand, Crosscut Asia+, revives a festival programme that ran from 2014 to 2019 under the name Crosscut Asia. Developed with the Japan Foundation — a public cultural-exchange organisation — the new version pairs a film programmer from Japan with one from Southeast Asia each year around a shared theme, with both curators selecting the lineup together.
The inaugural edition, themed "Side by Side," was programmed by Raslene, a film programmer and visual artist based in Jakarta, and Ueda Masayuki, program director at Waseda Shochiku in Tokyo, with Markus Nornes serving as advisor. Its six-film slate spans the region: Rafael Manuel's Filipiñana, Kamila Andini's Four Seasons in Java, Polen Ly's Becoming Human, Bachtiar Siagian's 1957 film Turang, Daniel Hui's Small Hours of the Night, and Hafiz Rancajale's Behind the Flickering Light: The Archive. The earlier Crosscut Asia strand had presented the Japan Foundation's Spirit of Asia Award, a prize for emerging Asian filmmakers, according to TIFF's 2018 festival guide.
The third initiative is the Kawakita Kashiko Award, established by the Kawakita Memorial Film Institute and presented as part of TIFF's Women's Empowerment section. It is named after Kawakita Kashiko — known as "Madame Kawakita" — who introduced European films to Japanese audiences before and after the Second World War and was instrumental in founding the Japan Film Library Council, the body that led to Japan's National Film Archive.
A committee of women selects the recipient. The inaugural committee comprises Sakano Yuka, executive director of the Kawakita Memorial Film Institute, and Yamasaki Toshi, CEO and president of Toho-Towa Company, Limited.
The first awardee is film critic Hata Sahoko, born in Tokyo in 1931. She moved to France as a journalist in 1957, returned to Japan to join the distribution firm Shingaiei Haikyu Co., Ltd., and then relocated to France as an acquisitions executive — a buyer who selects films for a distributor to license. Her acquisitions included Jacques Tati's Mon Oncle as her first major purchase, followed by Jean-Luc Godard's Breathless and René Clément's Purple Noon. She also won the Japan Film Pen Club Award for her 2012 autobiographical novel Kage no Bubun.
What makes these three initiatives notable together is the range of ground they cover: domestic talent seeking international reach, cross-border programming between Japan and Southeast Asia, and a lifetime-achievement lens on women in film culture. Kering's Women In Motion programme has also returned to TIFF with talks and panels, adding a further industry-facing dimension to the festival's women-in-cinema push, according to Kering.
The 38th Tokyo International Film Festival is scheduled to run from October 27 to November 5, 2025, per the festival's website.
