War, refugee influx common threads at Tokyo film fest

The 28th Tokyo International Film Festival will have six world premieres in Competition, including Turkish director Mustafa Kara’s Cold Of Kalandar, Hao Jie’s My Original Dream from China and Thai movie-maker Kongdej Jaturanrasmee’s Snap.

More importantly, the Competition will have three Japanese titles -- the first-ever occasion since 2004 that so many films from the country have found this berth. These will be Kohei Oguri’s Foujita, Yoshihiro Nakamura’s The Inerasable and Koji Fukada’s Sayonara.

The other titles are either Asian or international premieres. Plots dealing with war and the influx of refugees are two common threads running through the Competition fare.

Read: OK Kanmani, two other Indian movies headed for Tokyo

Bryan Singer, who won a Tokyo Gold prize as director of The Usual Suspects at the festival’s Young Cinema Competition in 1995, will chair the Competition jury. He will be assisted by Vietnamese director Tran Anh Hung (The Scent Of Green Papaya), Norwegian auteur Bent Hamer (1001 Grams, which screened at the festival’s Competition in 2014), producer Nansun Shi (Flying Swords of Dragon Gate), Danish writer-helmer Susanne Bier (In A Better World) and director Kazuki Ohmori (Godzilla vs. Biollante).

Three Indian movies will travel to the festival. These include Mani Ratnam’s O Kadhal Kanmani starring Nitya Menen and Dulquer Salmaan, Irrfan Khan-produced Kaash and Umesh Aggarwal’s Jai Ho. These, however, will not be part of Competition.

The festival runs from October 22 to 31.

Full Competition Line-Up

1. All Three Of Us, dir. Kheiron (France)

2. Born To Be Blue, dir. Robert Budreau (US-Canada-UK)

3. Cold Of Kalandar, dir. Mustafa Kara (Turkey-Hungary)

4. Family Film, dir. Olmo Omerzu (Czech Republic-Germany-Slovenia-France-Slovakia)

5. Foujita, dir. Kohei Oguri (Japan-France)

6. Full Contact, dir. David Verbeek (Netherlands-Croatia)

7. The Girl’s House, dir. Shahram Shah Hosseini (Iran)

8. God Willing, dir. Edoardo Falcone (Italy)

9. The Inerasable, dir. Yoshihiro Nakamura (Japan)

10. Land Of Mine, dir. Martin Pieter Zandvliet (Denmark-Germany)

11. A Monster With A Thousand Heads, dir. Rodrigo Pla´ (Mexico)

12. My Original Dream, dir. Hao Jie (China)

13. Nise - The Heart Of Madness, dir. Roberto Berliner (Brazil)

14. Roukli, dir. Veiko O~unpuu (Estonia)

15. Sayonara, dir. Koji Fukada (Japan)

16. Snap, dir. Kongdej Jaturanrasmee (Thailand)

(Gautaman Bhaskaran will be covering the Tokyo International Film Festival.)