Tokyo Filmex taps 'Suzhou'
Jury prize winner 'Djomeh' also wins $4,500
"Suzhou River," a bittersweet love story, won the grand prix prize of 20,000 feet of Kodak color film stock, worth ¥1 million yen (about $9,000) plus a cash bounty of about $4,500.
"Djomeh," Yektapanah's directorial debut, is a love story between a young Afghani immigrant and a girl in the remote Iranian countryside. Yektapanah won $4,500.
Mexican film director Arturo Ripstein led the international jury of five.
Weeklong film fest was organized with a focus on emerging independent Asian directors. Besides competition entries, 13 special invitation films, nine video programs and two pics by Sohrab Shahid-Saless, "A Simple Life" (1972) and "Still Life"(1975), screening for the first time in Japan, were unspooled.
The opening pic was one of the invitation films, "Blackboards," the second film by Samira Makhmalbaf
Event was presented by the Tokyo Filmex Organizing Committee and organized by Office Kitano and T-Mark.
