The bad news? Japan has only one entry in the Competition section at this year's Tokyo International Film Festival. The good news? The submission, Daihachi Yoshida's "Pale Moon," is a major contender for the $50,000 Tokyo Grand Prix.
The film is based on a best-selling novel by Mitsuyo Kakuta that tells the story of one woman succumbing to the allure of money and diving head first into a swamp of crime and disgrace.
"Pale Moon" is the English title of the film, but the novel's original Japanese title is "Kami no Tsuki" ("Paper Moon"). Director Yoshida tells The Japan Times that he thought a great deal about the translation of the title, and decided to change it because "there's already a classic out there called 'Paper Moon' " — a comedy from 1973 starring Ryan O'Neal and his daughter, Tatum.