Tokyo opens its 39th edition with Godzilla as centerpiece film

The Tokyo International Film Festival opened its thirty-ninth edition on October 26, with screenings held across the districts of Hibiya, Yurakucho, Marunouchi and Ginza. The festival will run until November 4.

The choice of flagship films reflects two different sides of the event. The opening film was “SUKIYAKI - Ue wo Muite Arukou”, while the role of centerpiece — the mid-festival showcase screening designed to draw audiences and media attention — went to “Godzilla -0.0”, the latest chapter in the saga that for seventy years has represented the most recognizable export of Japanese popular cinema worldwide. At the opening ceremony, held in the rain, lead actor Junichi Okada appeared on the red carpet.

Behind the media showcase, the festival maintained a tight competitive selection: the main competition chose 15 films out of 1,892 submissions received, a ratio that signals how much the event has become a sought-after venue for productions from across Asia and beyond. It is in this context that the launch of the new “CROSSCUT ASIA+” section should be read, produced in collaboration with the Japan Foundation — the Japanese public body for promoting culture abroad — and designed to give visibility to cinematographies from the region that struggle to find international distribution.

The combination of a genre blockbuster like “Godzilla -0.0” and a highly selective competition is no accident. Asia’s major festivals — Tokyo, but also Busan and Shanghai — have for years been competing for the same space: being both a showcase for local audiences and a launch platform for auteur cinema destined for international circuits. The high-profile centerpiece serves to guarantee press coverage and attendance; the selective competition serves to build credibility with critics and distributors. The figure of nearly two thousand submissions for just fifteen slots indicates that Tokyo, from this standpoint, continues to grow as a destination for producers.

The collaboration with the Japan Foundation for the section dedicated to Asian cinema fits into a broader strategy of cultural soft power that Japan has long pursued through its public institutions, placing cinema alongside other tools for the country’s international promotion. This is not the first time the Tokyo festival has forged ties with state bodies to expand its section dedicated to the continent: the decision to rename and relaunch this space as “CROSSCUT ASIA+” signals the intention to give it a more structural role in the program, no longer marginal compared to the main competition.

According to the Japanese news agency Jiji Press, which covered the event’s opening, “the thirty-ninth Tokyo International Film Festival opened on the twenty-sixth in Tokyo” (transl. from Japanese). The news of the opening, also reported by the film portal ciatr and by the festival’s official website managed by Unijapan, converges on these same program and calendar details.

The festival will run until November 4, with the main competition’s awards ceremony expected in the closing days of the event.