Tokyo Film Festival Hands Top Award To Milcho Manchevski’s ‘Sister Brother Manhole Cover’

This year’s Tokyo International Film Festival opened with a soaking wet red carpet, screened more than 200 films, welcomed AMPAS top brass and stars including Cate Blanchett, and ended with awards for films from across Europe, Asia and South America.
 
Sister Brother Manhole Cover, directed by Macedonian filmmaker Milcho Manchevski, won the top award of the festival, the Tokyo Grand Prix - The Governor of Tokyo Award, which comes with a cash prize of $19,000 (JYP3m). The film, which received its world premiere in Tokyo, follows two siblings who steal manhole covers for a living, until an injury forces them into contact with the Macedonian underworld.
 
Sun Xun’s Magic Atlas, an animated feature from Singapore, won the Special Jury Prize, along with a cash award of JPY500,000 ($3,160). The director is a Chinese artist who spent ten years making the film, combining animation with traditional art forms including medieval engravings and ink wash painting.
 
Best Director went to Argentina’s Lisandro Alonso for Double Freedom, about a woodcutter living alone in the forest who is forced to look after his sister when the mental institution she lives in closes down.

Best Actress went to Hu Ling for Wang Jiangyong’s France-Hong Kong co-production The Night That Binds Us, while Narita Ryo won Best Actor for Two Cigarettes, Three Nights, directed by Japan’s Mishima Yukiko (see full list of award winners below).
 
Australian director Rolf de Heer headed the main competition jury, which also included Tokyo and New York-based producer Alex Lo, Korean producer Oh Jungwan, French colorist Yov Moor and Japanese actress Makiko Watanabe.
 
In the Asian Future section, Best Film with a cash prize of JPY1M ($6,320) was presented to Serife Tavsan, directed by Afghan filmmaker Tareq Daoud, about a Turkish widow determined to “live out her seventies as she sees fit”. The Asian Future Special Mention went to Jani Be Good, directed by Indonesia's Ariani Darmawan, an intimate family drama about three generations of women learning to relate to each other and find their voice.
 
Asian Future, a competition section for emerging Asian filmmakers, had a separate jury including Japanese producer Eiko Mizuno-Gray (Renoir), Japanese filmmaker Akio Fujimoto (Lost Land) and Indonesian producer Yulia Evina Bhara (Autobiography).
 
In other sections, Nippon Cinema Now handed out two new prizes this year: the Best Film Award, which went to Tanaka Miki’s Silver Express, and the Special Jury Prize (JPY300,000), which was presented to Between Us from Matsumura Shingo.
 
In the Asian Students’ Film Conference, the Best Film Award (JPY300,000) went to Running Wild In The Sun, while the Special Jury Prize was jointly awarded to Everything’s Peachy and All Of Her, which received JPY100,000 each.
 
Nippon Cinema Now jury members included film critic Mathieu Macheret, producer Chieko Murata and Far East Film Festival president Sabrina Baracetti, while the Asian Students’ Film Conference jury included Berlinale Forum's Barbara Wurm, Romanian filmmaker Teodora Mihai and Tokyo and New York-based filmmaker Ema Ryan Yamazaki.
 
The TIFF Ethical Film Award (JPY200,000), which also had a separate jury, headed by actor Isomura Hayato, went to Isabelle Stever’s I Rarely Wake Up Dreaming. The Kurosawa Akira Award was presented to Iranian director Mohammad Rasoulof and Japanese filmmaker Mipo O.
 
The festival opened on October 26 with a screening of Takahisa Zeze's Sukiyaki and a host of stars on the red carpet, despite torrential rain, and closed on November 4 with Korean filmmaker Yeon Sang-ho’s Colony and the awards ceremony. The festival’s Centrepiece film was Takashi Yamazaki's highly-anticipated monster sequel Godzilla Minus Zero.
 
Japan’s Prime Minister Sanae Takaichi addressed the opening ceremony in a video message, in which she reaffirmed the government’s pledge to boost exports of Japanese content to $127BN (JPY20TR) by 2033 as part of its IP360 initiative introduced last year.
 
However, on the second day of the festival, speakers on a panel organised by the Motion Picture Association, pointed out that the new scheme is locking out local and international films with budgets of less than $5m [Streamlined Guides explored this issue recently and we’ll be doing a longer recap of Tokyo fest, TIFFCOM and other recent events in an upcoming report].
 
Tokyo film festival also hosted a delegation of top executives from the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences (AMPAS), including CEO Bill Kramer, likely in response to the Oscars’ recent recognition of Busan film festival as a qualifier for its Best International Feature category. Kramer told Deadline in an interview that the Academy is considering expanding the current list of six festivals that offer this pathway.
 
Cate Blanchett was also in town to present the first five shorts films produced under her Displacement Film Fund, along with fund directors Shahrbanoo Sadat and Mohammad Rasoulof.
 
Festival organisers reported admissions of 69,072 for 204 films over the ten days of the festival, compared to admissions of 68,039 for 184 films last year. Among the 204 films, 48 or 23.5% had female directors or were co-directed by male and female directors. In total, the festival drew 89,269 admissions across all events, hosted 185 guest appearances and welcome 2,015 international guests.

Tokyo International Film Festival ran October 26-November in the Hibiya-Ginza district, while the TIFFCOM content markets took place October 28-30.

TOKYO INTERNATIONAL FILM FESTIVAL 2026:

MAIN COMPETITION:

Tokyo Grand Prix - The Governor of Tokyo Award: Sister Brother Manhole Cover
Dir: Milcho Manchevski (North Macedonia, Bulgaria, Serbia, Albania, Italy, UK)

Special Jury Prize: Magic Atlas
Dir: Sun Xun (Singapore)

Best Director: Lisandro Alonso, Double Freedom (Chile, Argentina, Luxembourg, Germany, UK)

Best Actress: Hu Ling, The Night That Binds Us (France, Hong Kong)

Best Actor: Narita Ryo, Two Cigarettes, Three Nights (Japan)

Best Artistic Contribution: Until The Day Ends
Dir: Jelena Maksimovic (Serbia, Bulgaria, Slovenia, Montenegro, Croatia, Germany)

Audience Award: Heysel 85
Dir: Teodora Mihai (Belgium, Netherlands, Germany)

ASIAN FUTURE:

Best Film Award: Serife Tavsan
Dir: Tareq Daoud (Switzerland, Turkey)

Special Mention: Jani Be Good
Dir: Ariani Darmawan (Indonesia)

NIPPON CINEMA NOW:

Best Film Award: Silver Express
Dir: Tanka Miki (Japan)

Special Jury Prize: Between Us
Dir: Matsumura Shingo (Japan)

ASIAN STUDENTS’ FILM CONFERENCE:

Grand Prix: Running Wild In The Sun (Vietnam)

Special Jury Prize: Everything’s Peachy (Singapore) & All Of Her (Korea)

TIFF ETHICAL FILM AWARD: I Rarely Wake Up Dreaming, dir: Isabelle Stever (Germany, Ukraine)