Now in its 15th edition, Tokyo Filmex is Japan's leading art-over-commerce festival, offering a lineup packed with films screened earlier this year at major festivals around the world, while disdaining the glitz and glamour of the recently ended Tokyo International Film Festival. The Filmex guest list, though, typically includes well-known names from world cinema.
The festival runs Nov. 22 to 30 at three cinemas near Tokyo's Yurakucho Station — Yurakucho Asahi Hall, Toho Cinemas Nichigeki and Human Trust Cinema Yurakucho — and with the same basic Asian-focused program as editions past.
This year Filmex will unspool a competition section with nine films — eight are from Asia and the Middle East and one is from Japan (Izumi Takahashi's "Dari Marusan") — a retro program of three "Shochiku Noir" films from the crucial year 1960 and a section devoted to the early work of Canadian auteur David Cronenberg, whose new film "Maps to the Stars" is one of the 11 films in the Special Screenings section.