Tokyo Movie Competition: Xiaogang Gu and Mouly Surya to Obtain Kurosawa Akira Award

The Tokyo Worldwide Movie Competition revealed Monday that China’s Xiaogang Gu and Indonesia’s Mouly Surya will collectively obtain the pageant’s prestigious world cinema honor, the Kurosawa Akira Award, on the upcoming thirty sixth version of the occasion.

The award, which till final yr had been on a 14-year hiatus, is offered to “filmmakers who’ve made waves in cinema and are anticipated to assist information the trade’s future.” The prize has been beforehand awarded to movie luminaries resembling Steven Spielberg, Yoji Yamada and Taiwan’s Hou Hsiao-hsien. Final yr’s recipients had been Mexican auteur Alejandro González Iñárritu and Japan’s personal Koji Fukada.

The 2023 honorees had been chosen by a range committee together with director Yoji Yamada, veteran actress Fumi Dan, casting director and producer Yoko Narahashi, movie critic Saburo Kawamoto and Tokyo Competition’s programming director Shozo Ichiyama.

Hailing from southern China, Gu’s debut characteristic, Dwelling within the Fuchun Mountains, was shot over two years and premiered on the Cannes Movie Competition in 2019. The movie was chosen because the closing movie of Cannes Critics’ Week and likewise gained the Particular Jury Prize at Tokyo Filmex in 2019.

Jakarta-born Surya made her filmmaking debut with Fiksi in 2008. Her followup characteristic, What They Don’t Speak About When They Speak About Love, was screened in Tokyo in 2013 and was additionally the primary Indonesian movie to be chosen for the Sundance Movie Competition. She cemented her worldwide status together with her third characteristic, Marlina the Assassin in 4 Acts, which debuted in Cannes in 2017, and have become solely the fourth Indonesian movie ever to make the official choice. The movie would additionally go on to win the Grand Prize at Tokyo Filmex and was chosen as Indonesia’s entry for the worldwide characteristic class on the Academy Awards.

The Kurosawa Akira Award ceremony shall be held Oct. 31, on the Imperial Lodge. The thirty sixth Tokyo Worldwide Movie Competition runs Oct. 23 to Nov. 1.