Tokyo Festival unveils Gala and animation line-ups with Pascal, Blanchett
Pedro Pascal, Cate Blanchett and John Malkovich are heading to Tokyo this autumn.
The Tokyo International Film Festival has unveiled the Gala and animation selections for its 39th edition, with 15 titles in Gala and 12 in animation, according to The Hollywood Reporter. The announcement sets the shape of this year's event. The festival runs Oct. 26 to Nov. 4 in the Japanese capital.
Gala is the festival's red-carpet strand. It hosts high-profile premieres and star arrivals. A Gala slot usually means introductions from the stage and photographers on the carpet. This year it leans heavily on international directors with familiar casts.
Martin McDonagh's Wild Horse Nine stars John Malkovich, Sam Rockwell and Steve Buscemi. Tony Gilroy's Behemoth! stars Pedro Pascal and Olivia Wilde. Cristian Mungiu's Fjord stars Sebastian Stan and Renate Reinsve, while Jane Schoenbrun's Teenage Sex and Death at Camp Miasma stars Hannah Einbinder and Gillian Anderson, as listed by The Hollywood Reporter.
Japan is well represented too. Wayne Wang's Tokyo-set Diary of a Mad Old Man stars Lily Franky and Fan Bingbing. Yukiko Sode's All the Lovers in the Night also joins the Gala line-up. Both titles bring local stories to the festival's biggest stage.
Animation gets equal weight. That matters in Japan, home to some of the world's most devoted animation fans. Anime here means Japanese animation, a core draw with home crowds. Atsushi Nishigori's Grotesqqque, an original anthology feature from studio CloverWorks, leads the selection. An anthology feature collects several short stories in a single film. It sits alongside Shingo Natsume's Ghost – End of Night, produced by Madhouse, and DreamWorks Animation's Forgotten Island from directors Joel Crawford and Januel Mercado.
Blanchett will attend in person. She joins the festival for a showcase of the Displacement Film Fund, which backs filmmakers with experience of forced displacement. Five shorts supported by the fund will screen in Tokyo, followed by a question-and-answer session with Blanchett, according to The Hollywood Reporter. The session pairs those five films with a live discussion.
What makes this stand out is the mix. Star-led dramas sit beside Japanese features and studio animation. The full Gala list runs to 15 films and animation to 12, so these headliners will be joined by more titles across the ten-day programme. For audiences, it is a chance to catch them together on big screens with filmmakers in the room.
