Iranian actress Alidoosti gives Tokyo awards to winners

Alidoosti, Bryan Burk (‘Star Trek’, ‘Mission: Impossible’ and ‘Star Wars: The Force Awakens’), Hong Kong producer-director Stanley Kwan (‘Hold You Tight’, ‘First Night Nerves’) and Japanese actress Kaho Minami (‘Family X’, ‘Kabukicho Love Hotel’, ‘Oh Lucy!’) were members of the panel of the jury at the Japanese festival. The panel was presided over by acclaimed director Brillante Ma Mendoza of the Philippines (‘The Masseur’, ‘Kinatay’, ‘Asian Three-Fold Mirror 2016: Reflections’).

TIFF opened on October 25 and ran until November 3.

French director Mikhael Hers’ family drama, ‘Amanda’, was awarded the festival’s Grand Prix.

Edoardo De Angelis, meanwhile, took top directing honors for his emotional Italian drama ‘The Vice of Hope’, a film that also won his wife, Pina Turco, an award for best actress. In the last of the top prizes, Jesper Christensen picked up the best actor award for his portrayal of the proud but poor patriarch of a 19th-century farming family in the Danish film ‘Before the Frost’.

The Grand Prix was accepted on behalf of director Hers by French Ambassador Laurent Pic, who has been tasked with sending it back to Paris.

Christensen sent a video message to what he described as “one of my favorite film countries in the whole world”. His director, Michael Noer, accepted the actor’s trophy as well as the Special Jury Prize, the de facto second place award, for the same film, which Noer said was written for Christensen, a veteran European actor who has appeared in everything from art house hits to ‘James Bond’ features.

“I thank him for playing a version of my late father,” Noer said.

“He gave a portrayal of a certain type of man who was important in my life, even though this character lived more than a century ago.”

‘Amanda’ — a film that depicts a fragile, ad hoc Paris family torn apart by a terrorist act — also won the screenplay award, occasioning Hers to make two videos from Paris.

In accepting the awards on the director’s behalf, Pic told the audience that Hers is considered “the most Japanese director in France”.

Chinese films ruled the Asian category. Director Huang Huang won The Spirit of Asia Award for ‘Wushu Orphan’ — a film about a year in the life of a martial arts school for youth in rural China. The Asian Future Best Film Award went to ‘A First Farewell’ — a movie about the Uighurs of western China.

Two directors were cited in the Cinema Splash category, which honors Japanese independent cinema: Masaharu Take for the semicomic mystery, ‘The Gun’, and Seiji Tanaka for his debut potboiler, ‘Melancholic’. The category’s best film award went to Katsumi Nojiri’s ‘Lying to Mom’ — a bittersweet look into the world of a hikikomori (shut in). Veteran director Junji Sakamoto’s small-town drama, ‘Another World’, starring former SMAP star Goro Inagaki, won the Audience Award.