Martin Scorsese and Kiyoshi Kurosawa to be honored with the 2016 Samurai Award in Tokyo

By Asian Film Festival on October 12, 2016 • ( Leave a comment )

scorsesekurosawa

The organizers of the Tokyo International Film Festival (TIFF) announced that the recipients of the 2016 Samurai Award are Martin Scorsese and Kiyoshi Kurosawa.

The Samurai Award, now in its third year, commends achievements by filmmakers who continue to create groundbreaking films that carve out a path to a new era. This year the Oscar-winning director Martin Scorsese and Cannes award-wining director Kiyoshi Kurosawa will receive this award. The Award Ceremony will be held on November 3rd, 2016 during the Closing Ceremony of the 29th TIFF. Due to director’s schedule, Martin Scorsese will not be able to attend the ceremony, but Kiyoshi Kurasawa will be present at the ceremony to receive the award.

We would like to remind readers that the 29th TIFF will be held from October 25th to November 3rd, 2016 at the Ropppongi Hills, EX Theatre Roppongi and other theaters in Tokyo.

About Martin Scorsese
From his debut in the early 1970s, Martin Scorsese has been recognized as one of the most important and influential filmmakers of his generation. In 1976 he received the Palme d’Or at the Cannes Film Festival for Taxi, Driver, and in 2006 he won the Academy Award for Best Director for The Departed. He is passionate about the history of the industry in which he has spent his life, and in 1990 founded The Film Foundation, a nonprofit organization dedicated to the restoration and preservation of films. His latest film project, Silence, based on the novel by Japanese author Shusaku Endo, has taken 27 years to realize and is due to be released later this year in the US, and in 2017 in Japan.

About Kiyoshi Kurosawa
Kurosawa began making 8mm films at university. Sweet Home (1989) was his first commercial direction, followed by other high-profile films such as Cure (1997), License to Live (1999), Charisma (1999) and Pulse (2000). He won the Jury Prize of Un Certain Regard at the 61st Cannes Film Festival with Tokyo Sonata (2008), and again at the 68th for Journey to the Shore (2015).