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Tiffcom, the contents market that takes place alongside Tokyo International Film Festival (TIFF), had a tough ride during the pandemic, moving online in 2020 and only managing to come back as a physical event for the first time last year.

But with a new home at the Tokyo Metropolitan Industrial Trade Center in Hamamatsucho, the market seems to be finding its feet in a crowded autumn festival season, in part thanks to the world’s renewed interest in Japanese film, TV and anime content.

With Japan-set series such as Shogun and Tokyo Vice also drawing audiences globally, and mainland China, once the big draw in the region, becoming less outward-looking, the international industry is becoming much more open to collaborating with Japan.

And the interest is reciprocated as a younger generation of Japanese filmmakers and producers are challenging long-held perceptions that their local industry is insular and slow moving. Increasingly, Japanese...

Opening its doors on Wednesday for its first in-person event since 2019, the Tiffcom content market in Tokyo is celebrating its 20th-anniversary edition in a new venue and with an even more international flavor to its exhibitors.

“In terms of the exhibition area, it is now almost 50-50, compared to 60 percent domestic and 40 percent overseas in 2019,” says Yasushi Shiina, Tiffcom CEO. “The number of visitors from abroad will also increase to more than 280 invitees and more than 1,000 if other overseas visitors are included.”

Running for three days until Oct. 27 across four floors of the Tokyo Metropolitan Industrial Trade Center Hamamatsucho, the market is showcasing film, television and IP from Japan, Asia and across the globe.

Recently renovated, the new venue was the “perfect choice,” given its proximity to the main festival venues and accessibility from major airports and bullet train stations, says Shiina.

Among the more than 320 booths are sizable contingents in pavilions from Cambodia,...

The much-decorated Japanese drama “Drive My Car” was named the best film Sunday at the Asian Film Awards, defeating hot favorite “Decision to Leave.”

Other notable awards went to Japan’s Hirokazu Kore-eda whose “Broker” debuted at Cannes, but which was largely shunned in his home country.

“Decision to Leave,” which started the evening with ten nominations, was nevertheless rewarded with three awards, best screenplay, best production design and best actress for China’s Tang Wei.

While nominations were geographically diverse, the awards on Sunday skewed heavily towards North East Asia –Japan, Korea and Greater China – to the total exclusion of films from India, Indonesia and The Philippines. Snubs included the exclusion of Indonesia’s “Autobiography” and Happy Salma, both of which have been widely lauded on the festival circuit.

The awards ceremony returned to Hong Kong after detours to Macau and Busan and a Covid hiatus in previous years.

Further winners include ‘Gaspar’ from Indonesia and ‘Sima’s Song’ from Afghan director Roya Sadat.

Myanmar project Future Laobans, directed by Maung Sun and produced by jailed filmmaker Ma Aeint, won the Busan Award at the Asian Project Market today (October 11).

The project picked up the 15,000 cash prize in Busan. Currently in script development, Future Laobans is about three young scavengers in Myanmar who smuggle a jade stone across the border with dreams of becoming millionaires.

Filmmaker Ma Aeint was jailed in Myanmar in April on charges of anti-junta activity and is serving a three-year sentence. She was mentioned as...

Festival and market will be held at the same time and in venues that are walking distance from each other.

Tokyo International Film Festival (Tiff) and its accompanying market, Tiffcom, will take place at the same time this year and in adjacent venues.

The 33rd Tiff will take place for ten days from October 31 (Saturday) until November 9 (Monday) at its usual venues in Roppongi Hills, the Hibiya area and other venues in Tokyo.

Tiffcom will be held for three days from November 4 (Wednesday) until November 6 (Friday) at a new venue, The Prince Park Tower Tokyo. Roppongi Hills and Prince Park...

Tiffcom, Japan's largest film and TV content market, experienced another year of strong growth with a record number of exhibitors despite the disruption caused by both the coronation of Emperor Naruhito and the ongoing Rugby World Cup being held in the country. 

Tiffcom and the music market Timm are affiliated with the Tokyo International Film Festival, and usually these events would overlap. This year's market, however, closed four days before the fest began, a move prompted by Naruhito's coronation on Oct. 22, which was also designated a one-off national holiday in Japan. Also adding to the ...

Clouds on the global economic horizon and disruption to the scheduling of the event, have done little to dampen the interest of foreign visitors to Tiffcom, Japan’s biggest film and TV market. Especially those from China, says market head, Yasushi Shiina.

The market is again running at the Sunshine City shopping, entertainment and business complex in the Tokyo sub-center of Ikebukuro. But on Oct. 22-24, 2019, and with an unusual four-day gap between it and the Tokyo International Film Festival. Normally the two overlap.

The explanation given is the coronation of Emperor Naruhito on Oct. 22, which was declared a national holiday. Tokyo was full of foreign dignitaries for the coronation, and teeming with fans of the ongoing Rugby World Cup.

Shiina reports a 30% increase in sellers, to a record 405. And, at 950, the number of registered buyers has held steady compared with 2018. “With this growth, our current venue has become rather small,...

Market will start using two new screening venues and remain in Sunshine City for at least the next two years.

Tiffcom organisers have announced plans to expand into two new screening venues in Ikebukuro from 2019 as the Tokyo district gears up to become “an international city of arts and culture”.

From next year, the market will start holding screenings at a new 12-screen, 2,500-seat complex, Grand Cinema Sunshine, expected to be Tokyo’s biggest cinema when it opens in July 2019, as well as the Hareza Ikebukuro complex, which will have a soft opening in October 2019.

Hareza Ikebukuro will comprise three interconnected buildings,...

Ambitious building plans are intended to cement Ikebukuro and the surrounding Toshima district of Tokyo firmly at the center of the Japanese film industry.

Plans unveiled Wednesday at Tiffcom, part of the Tokyo International Film Festival, include the construction of two new complexes, housing 22 movie screens in total. The are expected to be completed in 2020, ahead of the Olympic Games which will be held throughout Japanese capital in Summer.

The plans were unveiled by Yukio Takano, mayor of Toshima, and Yasushi Shiina, head of Tiffcom. Takano called them a blueprint for “Culture City of East Asia 2019 Toshima.”

The Grand Cinema Sunshine will include 12 screens, 2,500 seats and all-laser projection. A culture center, called Hareza, will be built in Ikebukuro, with a further 10 screens. Hareza will include multiple halls and stages for musicals, performing arts and anime.

The new facilities are intended to be used year-round by local residents and visiting tourists,...

Growing business ties between China and Japan — the world's second- and third-biggest economies, respectively — was the key theme on the market floor at the 2018 Tokyo International Film Festival.

A recent political thaw between the two East Asian nations continues to reverberate through the content sector, with a record number of Japanese film titles already imported into China's giant theatrical market this year.

"The relationship between China and Japan now seems very good," Yasushi Shiina, CEO of Tokyo's Tiffcom content market, told The Hollywood Reporter, noting that Chinese buyers are now the most ...

Growing business ties between China and Japan — the world's second- and third-biggest economies, respectively — was the key theme on the market floor at the 2018 Tokyo International Film Festival.

A recent political thaw between the two East Asian nations continues to reverberate through the content sector, with a record number of Japanese film titles already imported into China's giant theatrical market this year.

"The relationship between China and Japan now seems very good," Yasushi Shiina, CEO of Tokyo's Tiffcom content market, told The Hollywood Reporter, noting that Chinese buyers are now the most ...

Veteran Japanese film executive to head up festival, which will undergo several changes in 2017.

The Tokyo Film Festival has tapped up Takeo Hisamatsu (pictured) to head up the 30th edition of the festival later this year.

Hisamatsu, who was formerly an executive managing director at Shochiku Co. and deputy general manager of Warner Bros. Pictures Japan, will replace outgoing Director General Yasushi Shiina, who held the top post at the Tokyo festival for four years.

With a nearly 40 year track record in the film business, Hisamatsu is currently the president of his own company My Way Movies.

In recent years, Hisamatsu has played a role in such productions as the 2013 Japanese remake of the Clint Eastwood western Unforgiven, Miwa Nishikawa’s 2009 comedy-drama Dear Doctor and Bushi No Ichibun, Yoji Yamada’s 2006 semi-prequel to Zatoichi.

“It is my hope that through this festival, we can continue to present films from around the world in all their diversity and richness...

Ian McKellen will attend the festival on behalf of the BFI and British Council’s Shakespeare on Film programme.

Serbian filmmaker Emir Kusturica will head the jury for the Golden Goblet Award at this year’s Shanghai International Film Festival (Siff), which will run June 11-19.

Kusturica has won the Cannes Palme d’Or twice, for When Father Was Away On Business in 1985 and Underground in 1995.

This year’s Siff will also present a special Shakespeare on Film programme with the British Film Institute and British Council. Ian McKellen will attend Siff and take part in an event on June 12 to discuss his 1995 film Richard III, directed by Richard Loncraine.

Siff will also build on its collaborations with the Tokyo International Film Festival (Tiff) and Busan International Film Festival (Biff). In 2015, Siff recommended three Chinese features to Tiff – Young Love Lost, which was selected for Tiff’s Asian Future section, and River and...

Other winners include All Three of Us, Cold of Kalandar, Land Of Mine, God Willing and Family Film.

Roberto Berliner’s Nise - The Heart of Madness, based on the true story of a Brazilian psychiatrist, took the top prize at the 28th Tokyo International Film Festival on Saturday.

The Brazilian film’s Gloria Pires also won the Best Actress award for her performance in the title role as Nise da Silveira, a doctor assigned to a Rio de Janeiro mental hospital in the 1940s.

“We all felt that it was a very believable world full of sadness, of humour and of triumph,” competition jury president Bryan Singer said in presenting the Tokyo Grand Prix, which comes with a cash prize of $50,000.

Berliner described the film as a “cruel job” in that it took 13 years out of his life to make but he never lost his determination to bring Nise da Silveira’s story to the screen...

The heads of Japan’s leading studios discussed their strategies for expanding into international markets at the close of Japan Day Project’s seminar programme on Monday.

Toho president Yoshishige Shimatani talked about how the company has set up a division to work on remakes of its content: “Sales of Japanese movies are small. We need new strategies and can’t just dub our movies into other languages and try to export them,” Shimatani said.

He also talked about working with Legendary Pictures on its Godzilla reboot: “Godzilla is like our Mickey Mouse. We handed it over to Legendary and they made a very good movie out of it.”

Kadokawa chairman Tsuguhiko Kadokawa explained how the company is setting up the Kadokawa Contents Academy in several Asian countries to offer courses for animation, manga and character design. “We want to use Japanese pop culture to produce quality content creators associated with local cultures,” Kadokawa said.

Jay...

The 27th Tokyo International Film Festival (Tiff) has announced a seven-year collaboration with the Japan Foundation that includes co-producing a pan-Asian omnibus series.

UniJapan and the Japan Foundation are set to hold Film Culture Exchange Projects linking Japan and other Asian countries at Tiff for the next seven years.

Firstly, this year Tiff will launch Crosscut Asia, a showcase of Asian films that will focus on particular countries, filmmakers, actors and themes. In its first year, Crosscut Asia will focus on new Thai films. The line-up will be announced Sept 30 with the rest of the Tiff selection.

Secondly, Japan Foundation Asia Center will present the Spirit of Asia Award to one film from the Asian Future section for up-and-coming directors. The winning production team will get a trophy and a trip to Japan, or, in the case of a Japanese winner, an invitation to travel to other Asian countries.

Lastly, Japan Foundation...

The Asian Film Awards Academy (Afaa) celebrated its inauguration last night (March 23) with Moet-afa Special Award Rising Star of Asia awardees Chiaki Kuriyama and Kim Nam-gil.

The Afaa is a joint initiative of the Hong Kong, Busan and Tokyo film festivals.

“This is a unique and historic collaboration between three major film festivals in Asia. Afa is now becoming a truly pan-Asian event, which is the whole point of the exercise,” said Roger Garcia, executive director of the Hong Kong International Film Festival Society (Hkiffs).

Garcia added they were looking into moving the awards ceremony to different cities in coming editions.

“Afaa is also a professional academy drawn from the film industry with a baseline of anyone who has been nominated to the AFAs being eligible for membership,” he explained.

“We’re planning to undertake events such as masterclasses and possible mentorships for young filmmakers, and thinking about having a relationship with AMPAS and BAFTA. Different countries...

Three major Asian film festivals – Hong Kong, Busan and Tokyo – are joining forces to relaunch the Asian Film Awards in a bid to increase the pan-Asian influence of the annual event.

The Asian Film Awards (Afa) Academy has been established to organise the ceremony, which for the past seven years has been overseen by the Hong Kong International Film Festival Society (Hkiffs).

The executive committee of the Afa Academy will be chaired by Wilfred Wong, who is also the chairman of the Hkiffs. Committee members include Lee Yong-kwan, director of the Busan International Film Festival (Biff) and Yasushi Shiina, director general of the Tokyo International Film Festival (Tiff) and Tiffcom market.

“The principal players in getting the Afa Academy off the ground are representatives of the three long established and major film festivals in Asia,” said Wong. “Their experience, involvement and collaboration will help to ensure a broader reach across Asia, and reflect...

Three major Asian film festivals – Hong Kong, Busan and Tokyo – are joining forces to relaunch the Asian Film Awards in a bid to increase the pan-Asian influence of the annual event.

The Asian Film Awards (Afa) Academy has been established to organise the ceremony, which for the past seven years has been overseen by the Hong Kong International Film Festival Society (Hkiffs).

The executive committee of the Afa Academy will be chaired by Wilfred Wong, who is also the chairman of the Hkiffs. Committee members include Lee Yong-kwan, director of the Busan International Film Festival (Biff) and Yasushi Shiina, director general of the Tokyo International Film Festival (Tiff) and Tiffcom market.

“The principal players in getting the Afa Academy off the ground are representatives of the three long established and major film festivals in Asia,” said Wong. “Their experience, involvement and collaboration will help to ensure a broader reach across Asia, and reflect...

The Tokyo International Film Festival is having something of an identity crisis. This year saw the arrival of Yasushi Shiina as the festival’s Director General. He acknowledged that the festival faced a list of problems. Chief amongst them is that despite it being the 26th year of the event, it hardly registers a blip on the overcrowded film festival calendar. “What I think is my job is that we tell the world that the Tokyo Film Festival exists in Japan and we let the world know that,” Shiina said. “We don’t want to be isolated.” He cited a number of problems […]...

The Tokyo International Film Festival is having something of an identity crisis. This year saw the arrival of Yasushi Shiina as the festival’s Director General. He acknowledged that the festival faced a list of problems. Chief amongst them is that despite it being the 26th year of the event, it hardly registers a blip on the overcrowded film festival calendar. “What I think is my job is that we tell the world that the Tokyo Film Festival exists in Japan and we let the world know that,” Shiina said. “We don’t want to be isolated.” He cited a number of problems […]...

Other winners include Iran’s Bending the Rules while Iceland’s Benedikt Erlingsson wins best director for Of Horses and Men.Scroll down for full list of winners

The 26th Tokyo International Film Festival (Tiff) has closed with the Tokyo Sakura Grand Prix going to Lukas Moodysson’s Swedish film We Are The Best!.

The film, which debuted at Venice and received its Asian premiere in Tokyo, is about a young punk band in the 1980s. TrustNordisk has so far sold the film to more than 50 territories including the Us, UK, Australia, France, Benelux and Italy.

The award includes a prize of $50,000 for director Moodysson and producer Lars Jønsson.

Behnam Behzadi’s Bending the Rules, a drama about a young Iranian theatre troupe trying to make it out of the country to perform overseas, won the $20,000 Special Jury Prize.

Tiff’s $10,000 Audience Award went to Lee Ju-hyoung’s Korean film Red Family, written and produced...

Tokyo – The 26th edition of the Tokyo International Film Festival (Tiff) opened Thursday with local, Asian and Hollywood stars, including Francis Ford Coppola and daughter Sofia Coppola, walking the distinctive green carpet at the Roppongi Hills complex. Organizers got the photo op they wanted, with prime minister Shinzo Abe flanked on his right by Tom Hanks and Paul Greengrass, star and director of opening film Captain Phillips, and on his left by Koji Yakusho (Memoirs of a Geisha) and Koki Mikitani, star and director of closing title The Kiyosu Conference. Q&A: Tokyo Film Fest Head Yasushi Shiina on Luring Hollywood

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Competition section includes six world premieres and titles from Koji Fukada, Jun Robles Lana and Lee Ju-hyoung.Scroll down for Competition list

The 26th Tokyo International Film Festival (Tiff) has announced its line-up with six world premieres in the Competition section including Hospitalité director Koji Fukada’s Au revoir l’été, Jun Robles Lana’s previous Haf project Barber’s Tales and the Kim Ki-duk-produced Red Family.

Those that are not world premieres are all Asian premieres including Aaron Fernandez’s San Sebastian entry The Empty Hours.

Chen Kaige, the Chinese director behind Farewell My Concubine, will head the competition jury. He will be joined by Korean actress Moon So-ri (Oasis), Australian producer Chris Brown (Daybreakers), Us director-writer-producer Chris Weitz (The Twilight Saga: New Moon), and Japanese actress Shinobu Terajima (Caterpillar).

Tiff is set to run Oct 17-25 with new festival head Yasushi Shiina putting an emphasis on showcasing homegrown productions and discovering Asian talent.

The newly launched...

The 26th Tokyo International Film Festival (Tiff) is to open with Paul Greengrass’ Captain Phillips, starring Tom Hanks.

Tiff runs Oct 17-25 with its base in the Roppongi Hills complex and the Tiffcom market Oct 22-24 in Odaiba.

Based on a true story about a Us container ship hijacked by Somali pirates, Captain Phillips is set to receive its world premiere at the New York Film Festival on Sept 27.

Sony Pictures will release it in Japan on Nov 29.

Tiff will close with writer/director Koki Mitani’s long-awaited sixth feature, The Kiyosu Conference. Based on Mitani’s novel of the same title, the historical epic stars Koji Yakusho.

Toho will release the film locally Nov 9.

The festival also announced the launch of Japanese Cinema Splash, which has grown out of the Japanese Eyes section of previous years. The new section aims to showcase Japanese independent films including animation, from directors in all stages of their careers, to the...

The 26th Tokyo International Film Festival (Tiff) is to open with Paul Greengrass’ Captain Phillips, starring Tom Hanks.

Tiff runs Oct 17-25 with its base in the Roppongi Hills complex and the Tiffcom market Oct 22-24 in Odaiba.

Based on a true story about a Us container ship hijacked by Somali pirates, Captain Phillips is set to receive its world premiere at the New York Film Festival on Sept 27.

Sony Pictures will release it in Japan on Nov 29.

Tiff will close with writer/director Koki Mitani’s long-awaited sixth feature, The Kiyosu Conference. Based on Mitani’s novel of the same title, the historical epic stars Koji Yakusho.

Toho will release the film locally Nov 9.

The festival also announced the launch of Japanese Cinema Splash, which has grown out of the Japanese Eyes section of previous years. The new section aims to showcase Japanese independent films including animation, from directors in all stages of their careers, to the...