Rasoulof and O Mipo to Receive Kurosawa Akira Award at Tokyo Film Festival
Mohammad Rasoulof and O Mipo will receive the Kurosawa Akira Award at the 39th Tokyo International Film Festival.
Iranian filmmaker Mohammad Rasoulof and Japanese director O Mipo will be honoured with the Kurosawa Akira Award at the 39th Tokyo International Film Festival (TIFF).
The recipients were selected by a committee comprising filmmakers Yamada Yoji and Lee Sang-il, cinematographer Ashizawa Akiko and TIFF programming director Ichiyama Shozo.
Rasoulof won the Golden Bear at Berlin in 2020 for There Is No Evil, which was later screened at the 33rd edition of TIFF. His The Seed of the Sacred Fig won the Special Jury Prize at Cannes in 2024 and was Germany's entry for best international feature at the Academy Awards.
The director was still completing that film when he left Iran in secret shortly before Cannes. He was jailed in 2010 while shooting a film and arrested again in 2022, before being provisionally released after eight months. Several of his films have been shot covertly and smuggled abroad for screening.
"Receiving the Kurosawa Award is a great honor for me. His films are profound explorations of the human condition and the moral choices we make in moments of crisis," Rasoulof said.
O Mipo began her career as a script supervisor after working at Obayashi Nobuhiko's production company. She made her feature debut in 2006 with The Sakais' Happiness. The Light Shines Only There (2014) earned her the best director award at the Montreal World Film Festival and was Japan's Oscar submission.
Being Good was named best Asian film at the Moscow International Film Festival. After a nine-year break during which she had two children, she returned with Living in Two Worlds (2024), which competed at Shanghai. Her latest work, How Dare You? (2025), screened in competition at Zlín.
The festival will also present a selection of Kurosawa's favourite films alongside two of his own works. The lineup includes Charles Chaplin's The Circus, 4K restorations of Kurosawa's Sanshiro Sugata and Ikiru, and Abbas Kiarostami's Where Is the Friend's House?.
The 39th Tokyo International Film Festival is scheduled to run from October 26 to November 4.