Taiwanese director Fu Tien-yu (傅天余) was presented a Kurosawa Akira Award at the Tokyo International Film Festival (TIFF) on Tuesday for her feature film Day Off (本日公休), event organizers said in a news release.
Fu’s film follows the protagonist, a female barber, embarking on a long journey to cut the hair of an old customer who moved away and is too sick to travel, the Ministry of Culture’s Taiwan Creative Content Agency said.
At the awards ceremony, TIFF programming director Ichiyama Shozo, who is also a selection committee member, said that Fu showed the same spirit in Taiwanese New Cinema wave and “depicted life in Taiwan realistically and sympathetically.”
Photo: CNA
Veteran Japanese director Yamada Yoji said that Fu’s film was “a really lovely film, which depicts people with precision and warmth,” and praised Fu’s “state-of-the-art” cinematic expression.
Yamada added that the movie made him wonder “why can’t the Japanese make this kind of work?”
After expressing gratitude for her recognition from the festival and the committee members, Fu called Yamada her “idol” and said she gets “great power from his work.”
Asked by a Taiwanese journalist how she felt about the future of young filmmakers in Taiwan, Fu said that her generation is different from Akira Kurosawa’s, but that she feels that “film is precious.”
The experience of going to a dark theater and sharing a film with others is irreplaceable, she said.
“I will put all my heart and soul into making films in the future,” she added.
The Kurosawa Akira Award “was born because many younger filmmakers don’t know the work of Akira Kurosawa, and we wanted to help pass down his name and spirit,” TIFF chairman Ando Hiroyasu said.
Akira Kurosawa was a Japanese director often cited as one of the greatest filmmakers of all time.
After being established in 2004, the award was discontinued for 14 years before being resumed in 2022.
Fu was the second Taiwanese director to receive the award, after Hou Hsiao-hsien (侯孝賢).
This year, recipients of the award each received a crystal trophy and a ￥1 million (US$6,485) cash prize.
In addition to Ichiyama Shozo and Yamada Yoji, this year’s selection committee consisted of casting director Narahashi Yoko and film critic Kawamoto Saburo.
The TIFF, now in its 37th year, last year declared its mission was “to amplify the possibilities of cinema from Tokyo and contribute to interactions with a diverse world.”
This year, the festival proposed the principles of “international exchange,” “nurturing talent for the industry’s future” and “the female perspective,” it said on its official Web site.
Meanwhile, Taiwan-based Malaysian film director Tsai Ming-liang (蔡明亮) was honored with an award on Sunday from the Academy of the Performing Arts in Prague, the Taipei Economic and Cultural Office in Prague said.
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