Tokyo: Yoshida Daihachi’s “Teki Cometh” Wins Actor, Director, and Grand Prix Honours

At a glamorous ceremony in the Japanese capital on Wednesday night, the major award categories for the Tokyo International Film Festival were announced, and Yoshida Daihachi’s Teki Cometh emerged as the clear winner.

The Tokyo Grand Prix, the festival’s top prize, was won by Teki Cometh, a feature version of a book by renowned Japanese novelist Tsutsui Yasutaka. Yoshida also took home the best director award, and star Nagatsuka Kyozo took home the best actor award.

Adios Al Amigo, a spaghetti western directed by Ivan D. Gaona and set in 1902 at the close of the Thousand Days War, won the festival’s special jury prize. The film is about a revolutionary soldier who gets a telegram informing him that his brother’s wife is pregnant. The soldier then persuades a hobbyist photographer to accompany him on his search for his brother, and the two of them run into a number of dubious characters along the way.

The winner of the best actress award was Anamaria Vartolomei, who starred in the Romanian drama Traffic, directed by Teodora Ana Mihai. Vartolomei plays one half of a Romanian couple who relocate to Rotterdam in search of a better life, only to end up on the periphery of Western European culture in the movie, which is based on a true story. The pair, who are quite impoverished, subsequently become involved in a scheme to steal art.

Chinese filmmaker Lina Yang’s Big World won the festival’s audience prize, which was chosen by a popular vote of the general public. In the film, a courageous man with cerebral palsy overcomes his disability to assist his grandmother in fulfilling her ambition of staging a play.