Australian director Rolf de Heer will preside over the international competition jury at the 39th Tokyo International Film Festival. The festival runs Oct. 26 to Nov. 4. The panel awards the Tokyo Grand Prix and its special jury prize.
De Heer will help pick the winners from the 15 films in competition. The full lineup is due Oct. 1, and the remaining jurors will be named closer to the opening.
Festival director Takeo Hisamatsu welcomed him, citing his distinctive perspective and decades of commitment to filmmaking. De Heer said his own workload leaves him little time to watch films, especially on the big screen, and that jury duty obliges him to see at least 15 with other filmmakers. “Can life ever get much better than this?” he asked.
His career spans four decades from a base in Tasmania. His 1993 feature Bad Boy Bubby won the Special Jury Prize and the Fipresci Prize at Venice, and four of his films have made Cannes’ official selection. Ten Canoes (2006) won the Special Jury Prize in Un Certain Regard. Charlie’s Country (2013) earned Indigenous Australian actor David Gulpilil the best actor prize in the same Cannes section.
Tokyo will also screen de Heer’s 2022 film The Survival of Kindness in its Australia Spotlight, a showcase of Australian cinema presented with the Australian Embassy in Japan. The film competed at the 73rd Berlin Film Festival and won the Fipresci Prize there.
Some commentators read the appointment as a statement of priorities. One writer called it a bet that curatorial credibility, rather than celebrity, separates one autumn festival from another, pointing to de Heer’s record of unsettling audiences at Cannes, Venice and Berlin without courting Hollywood.
The festival opens with the world premiere of the musical drama Sukiyaki and closes with the Korean zombie film Colony. The monster sequel Godzilla Minus Zero is the centerpiece feature. TIFFCOM, the festival’s industry market, runs Oct. 28 to 30.
