Rasoulof and O Mipo Named Winners of Tokyo's Kurosawa Akira Award

Iranian director Mohammad Rasoulof and Japanese director O Mipo will receive this year's Kurosawa Akira Award at the Tokyo International Film Festival, the 39th edition of the event. The festival says the award honours the Japanese director Kurosawa Akira and aims to introduce new talent to the wider world.

Rasoulof spoke at a press conference in Tokyo, and much of his time went to his fellow Iranian filmmaker Jafar Panahi. He said Panahi had received another sentence a few days earlier: five more years in prison and the confiscation of his property. Reuters had reported on October 28 that Iran's Revolutionary Court had sentenced Panahi to five years in prison and the seizure of all his assets.

Rasoulof also named Panahi as the winner of the Palme d'Or, the top prize at the Cannes Film Festival, last year. Panahi was already serving a sentence. In July 2022, he was ordered to serve a six-year prison term first issued by a Tehran court in 2010. The two men appeared together at the Locarno Film Festival in Switzerland in February, where Rasoulof received the first Locarno City of Peace Award. The Locarno festival shared footage of the appearance on its Facebook page.

The Kurosawa Akira Award selection committee was chaired by Yamada Yoji. Its other members were director Lee Sang-il, cinematographer Ashizawa Akiko and the festival's programming director, Ichiyama Shozo. The committee singled out two of Rasoulof's films, 'There Is No Evil' and 'The Seed of the Sacred Fig'. The festival announced the two winners on September 29.

Festival prizes like this one do more than fill a trophy cabinet. They put a filmmaker's earlier work in front of new audiences, programmers and buyers, often long after the first screenings. For Rasoulof and O Mipo, the award adds a Tokyo name to their records.

The festival continues in Tokyo, where the two directors will be honoured.