Tokyo Festival’s Women’s Empowerment Section Has Displacement as Its Through-Line
The Tokyo International Film Festival’s Women’s Empowerment section is in its third year, and its through-line, according to programmer Shimizu Yu, is people who have been pushed to move or left without anywhere to belong through no fault of their own. The section brings together films from Peru, China, Ukraine, India, Chile, Japan and the U.K.
Shimizu tells Variety that the films depict people falling through cracks in unstable political climates or social systems, struck by structural contradictions, and sometimes exposed to crises that threaten their dignity. She also says that because this is a thematic section, she is committed to selecting films on their own merits.
That is the right tension to preserve: a section framed around women’s empowerment can choose films for their own merits rather than as illustrations of a thesis.
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The merit line is the one that matters. A thematic section that only rewards films for matching the label would be a quota with better branding; Shimizu says she is choosing on the films’ own merits.
But the through-line is displacement, not empowerment as such. That can be a feature: a section can show people pushed to move or left without belonging rather than handing them a podium.