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TOKYO 2017

Tokyo to welcome eight competitors from Europe

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- The 30th edition of the Japanese gathering will feature a strong European contingent, including new films by Margarethe von Trotta and Guillaume Gallienne

Tokyo to welcome eight competitors from Europe
Forget About Nick by Margarethe von Trotta

For some time now, the Tokyo International Film Festival has managed to keep a handful of world premieres for its Tokyo Grand Prix competition - not only Asian films, but also European ones. This year, the 30th edition of the gathering, which takes place from 25 October-3 November, will welcome eight competitors hailing from Europe, including three world premieres.

The first of these is the new movie by German filmmaker Margarethe von TrottaForget About Nick [+see also:
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, which follows a woman in the process of transforming herself from a model into a designer in New York. She is forced to live with her husband’s ex-wife when he disappears without a trace. From Bulgaria comes Ship in a Room [+see also:
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, directed by Lyubomir Mladenov, portraying the encounter between a man, a woman and her mentally ill brother. And from Georgia there is Zaza Khalvashi’s Namme [+see also:
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, telling the story of a family that oversees a healing spring in a village in the Caucasus Mountains. 

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The Italian film Crater [+see also:
film review
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interview: Silvia Luzi, Luca Bellino
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]
, directed by Silvia Luzi and Luca Bellino (premiered in Venice’s International Critics’ Week); Euthanizer [+see also:
film review
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interview: Teemu Nikki
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]
, directed by Finland’s Teemu NikkiGutland [+see also:
film review
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interview: Govinda Van Maele
film profile
]
, directed by Luxembourg’s Govinda Van Maele (both of the latter screened at Toronto); the first film after the Yusuf trilogy by Turkey’s Semih KaplanogluGrain [+see also:
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interview: Semih Kaplanoğlu
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]
 (premiered at Sarajevo); Guillaume Gallienne’s new effort, Maryline [+see also:
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 (premiered at Angoulême); and Samuel Jouy’s Sparring [+see also:
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 (premiered at Locarno) round off the European presence in the competition.

The rest of the competition includes Edmund Yeo’s We the Dead (Malaysia), Asghar Yousefinejad’s The Home (Iran), Dong Yue’s The Looming Storm (China), Takahisa Zeze’s The Lowlife (Japan), Zhanna Issabayeva’s Sveta (Kazakhstan) and Akiko Ooku’s Tremble All You Want (Japan). The jury will be chaired by Tommy Lee Jones, who will be flanked by French director Martin Provost, Fajr International Film Festival director Reza Mirkarimi, Chinese actress Zhao Wei and Japanese actor Masatoshi Nagase.

Other sections will include further European titles, such as the Special Programme (where Thierry Frémaux will present his documentary on the Lumière brothers, Lumière! [+see also:
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) and the World Focus (with the Asian premieres of films such as Xavier Beauvois’ The Guardians [+see also:
film review
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interview: Xavier Beauvois
film profile
]
Arnaud Desplechin’s Ismael’s Ghosts [+see also:
film review
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Q&A: Arnaud Desplechin
film profile
]
 and Antonio Méndez Esparza’s Life and Nothing More [+see also:
film review
trailer
interview: Antonio Méndez Esparza
film profile
]
, among many others).

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