Tokyo Film Fest To Present Lifetime Achievement Award To Yoji Yamada

The Tokyo Film Festival will present a Lifetime Achievement Award to veteran Japanese director Yoji Yamada. 

Yamada’s latest work Tokyo Taxi, based on the 2023 French film Driving Madeleine, has been selected as this year’s TIFF Centerpiece film. He will also participate in the TIFF Lounge series of talks through a conversation with Kokuho director Lee Sang-il. 

Japanese actress Yoshinaga Sayuri, who has collaborated with Yamada on many films, will also receive TIFF’s Lifetime Achievement Award. She also stars in the festival’s opening film, Junji Sakamoto’s Climbing For Life, a biopic of Japanese mountaineer Junko Tabei.

This year’s Tokyo festival runs October 27-November 5.

Yamada has directed 91 films over the course of his career, starting with his debut The Strangers Upstairs (Nikai no tanin) in 1961 and also including 50 films in the Tora-san series, which entered the Guinness World Records as the world’s longest-running film franchise and became a national institution in Japan. 

From the 2000s onward, Yamada ventured into new territory with period films such as The Twilight Samurai (2002), which was nominated for Best Foreign Language Film at the Oscars; and The Hidden Blade (2004), which played in competition at Berlin International Film Festival. 

On announcing the award TIFF chairman Ando Hiroyasu said: “Yoji Yamada has long observed the realities of Japanese society with a discerning yet compassionate eye, crystallizing them into numerous cinematic masterpieces over the decades. Above all, he possesses a profound love of cinema and has consistently maintained a wide-ranging interest in films from both Japan and abroad, past and present, while demonstrating a deep commitment to the future of the medium. 

“He has also devoted himself to nurturing younger generations of filmmakers. His outstanding contributions to the advancement of cinematic art have earned him the highest admiration and respect.”