Yoshida Daihachi’s Teki Cometh proved to be the big winner of the Tokyo International Film Festival’s major awards categories that were revealed Wednesday night at a glitzy ceremony in the Japanese capital.
Teki Cometh, a feature adaptation of a book by celebrated Japanese novelist Tsutsui Yasutaka, won the festival’s top prize, the Tokyo Grand Prix, as well as the best director honor for Yoshida and the best actor award for star Nagatsuka Kyozo. The meditative film, featuring monochrome cinematography, tells the story of a retired professor of French literature (Nagatsuka) who gives the odd guest lecture and plans his own end based on when his money will run out. Old friends and former students come to visit. During one of his rare excursions, he encounters an attractive young French literature student, played by Yumi Kawai.
The festival’s special jury prize went to Adios Al Amigo, Colombian filmmaker Ivan D. Gaona’s spaghetti western set in 1902 at the end of the Thousand Days War. The feature tells the story of a revolutionary soldier who receives a telegram with the news of the pregnancy of his brother’s wife. The soldier then convinces an amateur photographer to come with him as he searches for his brother, and they both encounter a series of suspicious people on their journey.
The best actress prize went to Anamaria Vartolomei, the star of Teodora Ana Mihai’s Romanian drama Traffic. In the film, which is inspired by a real event, Vartolomei plays one half of a Romanian couple who move to Rotterdam for a better life, but instead find themselves living at the margins of Western European society. Desperately poor, the couple then get embroiled in an art heist plot.
The festival’s audience prize, picked by popular vote among public filmgoers, went to Chinese filmmaker Lina Yang’s Big World. The feature tells the tale of a brave man with cerebral palsy who overcomes his disability to help his grandmother realize her dream to stage a play.
Full winners list is below.
Grand Prix/The Governor of Tokyo Award
Teki Cometh
Special Jury Prize
Adios Al Amigo
Best Director
Yoshida Daihachi (Teki Cometh)
Best Actor
Nagatsuka Kyozo (Teki Cometh)
Best Actress
Anamaria Vartolomei (Traffic)
Award for Best Artistic Contribution
My Friend An Delie
Audience Award
Big World
Asian Future Best Film Award
Apollon by Day Athena by Night
Kurosawa Akira Award
Miyake Sho and Fu Tien-yu
37th TIFF Lifetime Achievement Award
Bela Tarr
TIFF Ethical Film Award
Dahomey