The 27th edition of Tokyo Filmex will take place November 20–29 in Tokyo’s Yurakucho district, featuring a competition section open to emerging Asian directors with films completed in 2025 or 2026. Ten titles have been selected, including Oscar submissions from Thailand and Nepal titled “9 Temples to Heaven” and “Elephants in the Fog” respectively.
Taiwanese actor Lee Kang-sheng has been appointed to the three-member international jury, with additional jurors to be announced at a later date. The jury will award a Grand Prize worth JPY700,000 ($4,500) and a Special Jury Prize worth JPY300,000 ($1,900), with both awards presented at a ceremony on November 29. Four of the competition selections are directorial debuts. “9 Temples to Heaven” marks the narrative debut of Sompot Chidgasornpongse, a former assistant director to Thai filmmaker Apichatpong Weerasethakul, and previously screened at Cannes’ Directors’ Fortnight and won awards at the Shanghai International Film Festival. Nepal’s “Elephants in the Fog,” directed by Abinash Bikram Shah, won the Jury Prize at Cannes’ Un Certain Regard section, marking the first Nepali film selected for the festival’s official program.
The festival’s program also includes films from the Venice, Toronto, and Berlin film festivals. Notable selections include Michelle Zhou’s “Big Little Things” from Venice’s Horizons strand, which won the Premio Autrici Under 40 prize and received four Golden Horse nominations, and Ali Asgari’s “A Bit of Light” from Venice’s main competition. Korean director Yoon Dan-bi’s “The World Before” comes from Toronto’s Platform competition, while Japanese filmmaker Sugita Kyoshi contributes his fifth feature “A Song From Beyond.”
The festival will open with novelist Maha Harada’s directorial debut “In My Father’s Room,” which premiered in competition at San Sebastian and won the Fipresci Prize and Ateneo Guipuzcoano Award. Anthony Chen’s “We Are All Strangers,” Singapore’s Oscar submission and the conclusion of his “Growing Up” trilogy, will close the festival. The 12-film Special Screenings section includes Hong Kong director Ann Hui’s restored 1981 film “The Story of Woo Viet” and a double bill of Tsai Ming-liang’s recent “Walker” films, which will feature Lee Kang-sheng.
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