The Tokyo International Film Festival will introduce two new competitive awards, a Southeast Asia-focused section and a prize honoring women in cinema.
TIFF is also launching Crosscut Asia+, a new section developed with the Japan Foundation that continues the mission of the earlier Crosscut Asia strand, which ran from 2014 to 2019. The section will pair film programmers from Japan and Southeast Asia each year around a shared theme, with curators from both sides selecting the lineup together.
Film critic Hata Sahoko is the award’s first recipient. Hata, who was born in Tokyo in 1931, moved to France as a journalist in 1957 before returning to Japan to join the distribution firm Shingaiei Haikyu Co., Ltd., then relocated to France as an acquisitions executive. She brought Jacques Tati’s “Mon Oncle” to Japan as her first major acquisition, followed by Jean-Luc Godard’s “Breathless” and René Clément’s “Purple Noon.” She has also authored several books and won the Japan Film Pen Club Award for her 2012 autobiographical novel “Kage no Bubun.”
Hata said she initially declined the honor, recalling the prewar and postwar eras when women were largely excluded from the industry even as Kawakita built a career shaping which films crossed borders.
“Her legacy remains a page in film history, as well as a chapter in the history of women,” Hata said. “On one occasion, Mme. Kawakita whispered to me: ‘As women, there are so many moments where we must endure, aren’t there?’ They were profound words indeed. It is precisely because I felt a compelling desire to pass this story on that I resolved to accept the award.”
The selection committee for the inaugural Kashiko Kawakita Award comprises Sakano Yuka, executive director of the Kawakita Memorial Film Institute; Yamasaki Toshi, CEO and president of Toho-Towa Company, Limited; and Onda Yasuko, senior writer at the Yomiuri Shimbun.
