The Tasmania-based director's 2022 Berlinale entry 'The Survival of Kindness' will screen separately as part of an Australian cinema showcase.
Rolf de Heer is heading to Tokyo, and not just to watch films from the sidelines.
The Tokyo International Film Festival has named the Tasmania-based director president of its international competition jury for the 39th edition, running October 26 to November 4. TIFFCOM, the festival's industry market, runs alongside it from October 28-30.
De Heer's own work will be in the building too, just not in front of him as a juror. His 2022 film The Survival of Kindness, which competed at the Berlinale and won the FIPRESCI Prize there, screens as part of Tokyo's Australia Spotlight, a strand within the festival's World Focus section put together with the Australian Embassy in Japan.
The man has been on the circuit long enough to know what the job involves. Bad Boy Bubby took the Special Jury Prize and FIPRESCI Prize at Venice back in 1993. Four of his films have made Cannes' official selection, Ten Canoes among them, which picked up the Special Jury Prize in Un Certain Regard in 2006. His collaborations with the late David Gulpilil, particularly The Tracker and Charlie's Country, remain a throughline in his career, and Charlie's Country got Gulpilil the best actor award at Cannes.
De Heer, trained at the Australian Film, Television and Radio School, has written or co-written 14 produced screenplays and directed something like fifteen and a half features across wildly different budgets and genres. That range is presumably part of why Tokyo wants him running a jury that has to sit through 15 competition titles from all over the world.
He seems fairly pleased about it himself. "For any of us attending the Tokyo International Film Festival, it is a privilege," de Heer said in a statement carried by Deadline, Variety and The Hollywood Reporter. "For me, as a filmmaker, it is even more so. The more films I manage to make, the fewer films I manage to see, especially on the big screen. But as a part of this jury, I have the duty, the obligation, to see at least 15 films and talk about them with other filmmakers."
Festival director Takeo Hisamatsu welcomed the appointment in similarly warm terms, saying de Heer has "spent decades opening up new possibilities in cinema" and that the festival is looking forward to "the fresh dialogue and discoveries" his experience brings to this year's competition slate.
Tokyo hasn't yet released the full competition lineup de Heer's jury will be judging. That announcement, along with the rest of the Australia Spotlight titles, is expected in the run-up to the October 26 opening.
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