'Flags' waving at Tokyo fest

Eastwood pic the first of a pair about battle of Iwo Jima

By MARK SCHILLING

Clint Eastwood's 'Flags of Our Fathers,' which looks at the Battle of Iwo Jima from the American POV, will open the Tokyo Film Festival.

Eastwood

TOKYO -- Clint Eastwood's WWII pic "Flags of Our Fathers" will open the 19th Tokyo Film Festival on Oct. 21, fest organizers announced Monday.

Movie is one of a pair Eastwood is helming about the battle against the Japanese for the island of Iwo Jima -- one told from the American perspective ("Flags"), the other from the Japanese POV ("Red Sun, Black Sand"). DreamWorks and Warner Bros. partner on both; "Flags" opens in the U.S. on Oct. 20, but no release date has yet been set for "Red Sun."

The Oct. 29 closer is "Murder of the Inugami Clan," 90-year-old helmer Kon Ichikawa's remake of a pic he first filmed in 1976.

Ichikawa is also being honored with the Akira Kurosawa career achievement prize. Previous honorees include Steven Spielberg, Hou Hsiao-Hsien and Yoji Yamada.

Some 584 films from 66 countries applied for the 15 competition slots; those chosen will vie for the Tokyo Sakura Grand Prix. Just five were announced Monday: Danish helmer Peter Schonau Fog's "The Art of Crying," Pu Jian's "The Exam," Udi Aloni's "Forgiveness," Michel Hazanavicius' "OSS 117, Cairo Nest of Spies" and Charles Biname's "The Rocket."

French helmer Claude Lelouch heads the international competition jury, which includes Japanese actress Youki Kudoh and Venice film fest director Marco Muller.

Al Gore's doc "An Inconvenient Truth" will unspool in the special screenings section together with Japanese romantic comedy "Christmas on July 24th Avenue," South Korean period blockbuster "King and the Clown," Japanese comedy "Kisarazu Cat's Eye: Sayonara Game," anime "Tekkonkinkreet," Anthony Hopkins starrer "The World's Fastest Indian" and "Yumejuya," an omnibus by several Japanese helmers that delves into a century-old riddle posed by author Soseki Natsume.

Also skedded are Winds of Asia, a 25-film section devoted to Asian films; Japanese Eyes, a section of Japanese films; the Short Film Festival; the Tokyo Women's Film Festival; and retrospectives dedicated to helmers Shohei Imamura, Kon Ichikawa and Seijun Suzuki.

For the second year the fest is presenting the Tokyo Intl. Film Festival in Akihabara, nine days of screenings, events and promotions related to anime, manga and games held in Akihabara, a shopping district in downtown Tokyo that has become the mecca of Japanese pop culture. Opening film will be toon "Paprika," from anime auteur Satoshi Kon ("Perfect Blue," "Tokyo Godfathers"). 

The three-day Tiffcom film market will begin Oct. 23.