This week the festival organizers proudly announced that the Tokyo International Film Festival will focus on two iconic directors: Mamoru Hosoda and Shunji Iwai.

This year Animation Section will focus on Mamoru Hosoda, the brilliant director whose “Summer Wars” and “Wolf Children” hit local and international cinemas by storm. His latest production “The Boy and the Beast” become the highest-grossing local film at the Japanese box office last year. Hosoda’s universal themes and storytelling genius have attracted all-age audience both national and worldwide. As for the Japan Now Section it will showcase films from Shunji Iwai, whose groundbreaking style and youth focused vision are known as the “Iwai Aesthetic”. His most notable films are “Love Letter”, “All about Lily Chou-Chou”, “Hana and Alice” and “A Bride for Rip Van Winkle”.

We remind our readers that the 29th Tokyo International Film Festival (TIFF) will be held from October 25th until November 3rd (2016) at Roppongi Hills and other venues in Tokyo.

About Mamoru Hosoda
Born in 1967, Mamoru Hosoda began his career as an animator at Toei Animation, before making his directorial debut with “Digimon Adventure”. After leaving Toe, he directed “The Girl Who Leapt through Time”, which became a record-breaking hit in Japan, as well as receiving a Special Mention at the Annecy Animation Film Festival. In 2009, Hosoda’s “Summer Wars” was selected for the Berlin Film Festival’s Generation section. In 2011, he cofounded the Studio Chizu animated film studio with producer Yuichiro Saito. In 2012, “Wolf Children” was a big hit around the world, with admissions in France alone topping 220,000. His latest film, “The Boy and The Beast”, tallied nearly 5 million admissions in Japan, became the first animated film in the main Competition at the San Sebastian Film Festival, and is still playing in theaters all over the world.

About Shunji Iwai
Born in 1963, Shunji Iwai’s directing career began in 1988 with commercials, music videos and TV dramas, soon earing him acclaim for his cinematic style and vision, which came to be known as the “Iwai Aesthetic”. In 1995, he scored a huge hit across Asia with “Love Letter” and in 1996, “PiCNiC” won him a second consecutive award in the Forum section of the Berlin Film Festival, bringing him to even greater international attention. “Swallowtail Butterfly” blazed a new trail in movie and music collaboration, and “All About Lily Chou-Chou” won awards at Berlin and Shanghai. Other major include “Hana and Alice”, a segment in the omnibus film New York, “I Love You”, and his first English-language film, “Vampire”, which played in competition at Sundance and in the Berlin Panorama section. Iwai’s first feature-length animated film, “The Case of Hana & Alice”, was invited to the 2015 Annecy Animation Festival. His latest film, “A Bride for Rip Van Winkle”, was released in Hong Kong and Taiwan prior to domestic release in Japan.