Iranian filmmaker Mohammad Rasoulof and Japanese director O Mipo will each receive the Kurosawa Akira Award at the 39th Tokyo International Film Festival. The two filmmakers were chosen by a committee that included filmmakers Yamada Yoji and Lee Sang-il, cinematographer Ashizawa Akiko, and TIFF programming director Ichiyama Shozo.
The Kurosawa Akira Award recognizes filmmakers whose work has made a significant contribution to cinema, and this year’s recipients come from distinctly different filmmaking backgrounds. Rasoulof has built an internationally recognized body of work while continuing to make films under significant pressure in Iran, while O Mipo has developed a career that has moved between intimate human stories and wider social themes.
Mohammad Rasoulof won the Golden Bear at the Berlin Film Festival in 2020 for There Is No Evil, which later screened at the 33rd edition of TIFF. His more recent film, The Seed of the Sacred Fig, took the Special Jury Prize at Cannes in 2024 and was later submitted by Germany for the Best International Feature Oscar.
The film’s path to Cannes came at a steep personal cost. Iranian authorities had already arrested Mohammad Rasoulof multiple times over the years, including in 2010 while he was shooting a film, and again in 2022 after he criticised the government’s handling of a deadly building collapse in Abadan. He was released after eight months on health grounds.
While he was still finishing The Seed of the Sacred Fig, an Iranian court sentenced him to eight years in prison, flogging and confiscation of his property, ruling that his films amounted to collusion against national security. With only a few hours to decide, he chose to flee the country on foot rather than turn himself in. He crossed the mountainous border and reached Europe just days before the film’s Cannes premiere.
Rasoulof has said that much of his work has been shot in secret and smuggled out of Iran to be shown abroad. The circumstances surrounding The Seed of the Sacred Fig therefore became closely connected to the film’s international journey, as Rasoulof completed the project while facing the possibility of imprisonment and ultimately left Iran before its Cannes premiere.
“Receiving the Kurosawa Award is a great honor for me. His films are profound explorations of the human condition and the moral choices we make in moments of crisis,” Rasoulof said, referring to the award’s namesake, legendary Japanese director Akira Kurosawa.
The award also recognizes O Mipo, whose career took a very different route into filmmaking. She got her start as a script supervisor after working at director Obayashi Nobuhiko’s production company, before making her own feature debut in 2006 with The Sakais’ Happiness.
Her 2014 film The Light Shines Only There won her the Best Director prize at the Montreal World Film Festival and went on to become Japan’s own Oscar submission that year. The recognition marked an important stage in O Mipo’s career and established her work on the international festival circuit.
Her film Being Good was later named Best Asian Film at the Moscow International Film Festival. O Mipo subsequently stepped away from directing for nine years to raise her two children before returning to filmmaking with 2024’s Living in Two Worlds. The film competed at the Shanghai International Film Festival.
She followed that return with 2025’s How Dare You?, which played in competition at the Zlín Film Festival. Her return to directing has therefore added another chapter to a career that has developed across different periods and forms of filmmaking.
Alongside the award presentation, this year’s Tokyo International Film Festival will screen a selection of Kurosawa’s own favourite films as a tribute to the legendary director. The programme will include Charles Chaplin’s The Circus, 4K restorations of Kurosawa’s own Sanshiro Sugata and Ikiru, and Abbas Kiarostami’s Where Is the Friend’s House?
The tribute programme places the award in the wider context of Kurosawa’s influence on international cinema. The selected films span different filmmakers and cinematic traditions, while the restoration of Kurosawa’s own work provides an opportunity for audiences to revisit two of his films in 4K.
The 39th Tokyo International Film Festival runs from October 26 to November 4. The presentation of the Kurosawa Akira Award to Mohammad Rasoulof and O Mipo will form part of this year’s festival, bringing together two filmmakers whose careers have followed very different paths while remaining connected through their commitment to filmmaking and international cinema.