Tokyo International Film Festival (TIFF) is set to honour filmmakers Lee Sang-il and Chloé Zhao with the Kurosawa Akira Award.
The award honors Kurosawa’s “legacy and ongoing influence” and is presented to filmmakers who have “made waves in cinema and are expected to help guide the industry’s future”. A ceremony to present the awards will be held at the Imperial Hotel Tokyo on November 3.
Lee, who was born in Niigata, Japan, won best director at the Japan Academy Awards for his 2006 film Hula Girls, and has since directed multiple award-winning films, including Villian (2010), Unforgiven (2013) and Rage (2016), of which the latter two starred Oscar nominee Ken Watanabe. His 2025 film Kokuho, which also features Watanabe, premiered at Cannes and has become one of this year’s biggest box office hits in Japan, earning more than $74m (¥11bn).
Chloé Zhao, born in Beijing, made her directorial debut with 2015’s Songs My Brothers Taught Me, which debuted at Sundance and played in Directors’ Fortnight at Cannes. Her 2020 film Nomadland won three Oscars, including best director, with Zhao the second woman and first non-white woman to do so. Her adaptation of Maggie O’Farrell novel Hamnet is set to premiere at Toronto next month.
The filmmakers were chosen by a selection committee composed of director Yoji Yamada, casting director and producer Yoko Narahashi, journalist and critic Saburo Kawamoto and TIFF programming director Shozo Ichiyama.
The Kurosawa Akira Award was revived by the festival in 2022 after an absence of 14 years. Last year’s recipients were the filmmakers Sho Miyake, who won Locarno’s Golden Leopard earlier this month with Two Seasons, Two Strangers, and Fu Tien-yu.
The 38th TIFF is set to run from October 27 to November 5.
AloJapan.com