Tokyo International Film Festival jury president Rolf de Heer has shrugged off the significance of FIAPF’s new official A-list, saying it matters a great deal to some people — and not at all to others. The Australian filmmaker, director of “Bad Boy Bubby” and “Ten Canoes,” was speaking at the 39th Tokyo International Film Festival’s jury press conference on Tuesday.
Rolf de Heer (Credits: Variety)
Tokyo jury chief Rolf de Heer on FIAPF’s new A-list status
FIAPF’s decision to make A-list status official names Tokyo among 17 festivals given the classification. Asked whether the label mattered or was a redundant system, de Heer suggested it was unlikely to change much about the event itself — a pragmatic take from the man leading its competition jury.
The comment captures a long-running debate in the festival world: whether formal accreditation changes anything for filmmakers, audiences and the films themselves, or simply puts an official stamp on reputations that already exist. Tokyo, one of Asia’s most prominent festivals, hardly needs an introduction to international cinephiles, and de Heer’s answer implied the festival’s standing will rest on its programming rather than its paperwork.
De Heer himself brings considerable arthouse weight to the jury room. Best known for the confronting “Bad Boy Bubby” and the acclaimed “Ten Canoes,” the first feature made entirely in an Australian Aboriginal language, he has spent a career championing distinctive, uncompromising cinema — exactly the kind of perspective a competition jury needs when sorting the bold from the merely polished.
As the 39th edition unfolds, the jury’s verdicts will matter far more than any list. But de Heer’s wry dismissal of the A-list fuss is a reminder that, for the filmmakers in competition, the prize that counts is the one decided in the dark, not the one printed in a federation’s announcement.
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Source: Variety — read the full story there.
