The 24th edition of the Tokyo International Film Festival ended on Sunday, after nine days and 128 films, without any major mishaps or controversies. This was a disappointment to one journalist friend: "A good film festival invites controversy," she told me at the closing party. "TIFF hates it."
This is true enough, although director Masahiro Kobayashi stirred up a bit of indignation at the competition jury press conference with his open advocacy of "Play," Swedish director Ruben Ostlund's drama about the psychological bullying of black immigrant children in the town of Gothenburg. "It's a racist film," one American documentary filmmaker complained to me, "and Kobayashi was saying it should have won the Grand Prix."
Instead, "Untouchable," a French film about a cranky aristocrat paralyzed from the neck down and his ex-con black caregiver, won the Tokyo Sakura Grand Prix, while Shuichi Okita's "Kitsutsuki to Ame (The Woodsman and the Rain)," a dramady about a 60-year-old lumberjack (Koji Yakusho) riding to the rescue of a troubled indie film shoot, took the Special Jury Prize.