Cate Blanchett is headed to Tokyo next month, and this time she's not there to promote a film she's in. She's bringing five short films she helped fund.

The 39th Tokyo International Film Festival, running October 26 to November 4, will host the Japan premieres of the inaugural slate produced under Blanchett's Displacement Film Fund. All five deal, in one way or another, with people who've had to leave home. After the screenings, Blanchett will sit for a Q&A with two of the directors, Mohammad Rasoulof and Shahrbanoo Sadat.

Rasoulof's contribution, "Sense of Water," follows an Iranian writer wrestling with a foreign language in exile. Sadat's "Super Afghan Gym" is set inside a Kabul gym during the single hour each day set aside for women. The other three titles round out a genuinely international spread: Hasan Kattan's "Allies in Exile" tracks two Syrian filmmakers documenting the grind of waiting on asylum papers, Maryna Er Gorbach's "Rotation" follows a young Ukrainian woman's shift from civilian life into military service through a hypnosis ritual, and Mo Harawe's "Whispers of a Burning Scent" centres on a wedding musician whose private life gets pulled into public view.

A fund with some heavyweight backers

Blanchett co-founded the Displacement Film Fund to support filmmakers who've been displaced themselves or who have a track record of telling their stories with care. It launched at the International Film Festival Rotterdam in January 2025, with Rotterdam's own Hubert Bals Fund managing it and UNHCR on board as strategic partner. Uniqlo signed on as a founding partner. When the fund's second edition was confirmed at Rotterdam this year, the SP Lohia Foundation joined as a major partner too, alongside the Amahoro Coalition, Master Mind, the Tamer Family Foundation and the Dutch cultural body Droom en Daad.

"Being displaced shouldn't mean filmmakers abandon their creativity," Blanchett said in a statement released ahead of the festival. "In fact, their stories may feel even more urgent."

The Tokyo trip does double duty for her. That same week, the festival will present her with its Praemium Imperiale Award, a separate honour unconnected to the shorts programme. It's a busy stretch for Blanchett generally. She's just wrapped Alice Birch's "Sweetsick" and is developing a Martha Stewart film with director Janicza Bravo. Her Golden Lion winner from Venice, "Father Mother Sister Brother," gets a Japanese theatrical release on November 20, meaning she'll likely be back in the country's press cycle again before the year is out.

For now, the details that matter are logistical. Five shorts, two directors on stage with her, and a festival run that puts stories about exile and asylum in front of audiences an ocean away from where most of them were shot.