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The Singapore International Film Festival (SGIFF) will honor Japanese filmmaker Kore-eda Hirokazu with its Cinema Honorary Award and has named Korean director Yim Soon-rye jury head of its Asian Feature Film Competition.
The 37th edition of SGIFF runs Oct. 21 to Nov. 1.
Kore-eda will attend a special presentation of “Look Back” on Oct. 24, marking the film’s Southeast Asia premiere ahead of its Oct. 29 theatrical release. He will also join an In Conversation With dialogue session that day, where he will be presented with the honorary award, the festival’s top prize for filmmakers who have made a lasting mark on Asian cinema.
Kore-eda has built his career on intimate dramas centered on the family unit, tracing the friction between individuals and the social structures around them. His 2018 film “Shoplifters” won the Palme d’Or at the Cannes Film Festival, the first Japanese film to take the top prize in more than two decades. His subsequent films “Broker” and “Monster” drew both commercial and critical success, cementing his standing as one of Japan’s most prominent directors. Earlier credits include “Nobody Knows” and “Like Father, Like Son.”
“Look Back” marks the first live-action feature adaptation of any manga by Fujimoto Tatsuki. The film follows Fujino, an elementary school student whose confidence as her class’s star cartoonist is upended when a reclusive classmate, Kyomoto, proves to be a far superior artist. Their rivalry curdles into obsession, and even after the two eventually connect and forge a friendship through their shared pursuit of manga, an opportunity to create a serial later arrives and pulls them apart. The film competed for the Golden Lion at the Venice Film Festival.
Yim, who studied filmmaking at the University of Paris 8, debuted with “Three Friends” in 1996 and went on to direct “Waikiki Brothers,” the box office hit “Forever the Moment,” “The Whistleblower,” “Little Forest” and “The Point Men.” She has also spent 12 years as president of an animal rights association and co-leads the Korean Center for Gender Equality in Film. Yim will speak at SGIFF Industry Days on Oct. 27.
SGIFF’s industry arm, SGIFF Pro, is expanding this year, with Industry Days growing from three to four days. Programming will include talks from cinematographer Ashizawa Akiko, laureate of the 2026 Pierre Angénieux Tribute awarded at the Cannes Film Festival earlier this year, and filmmaker Fukada Koji, whose Singapore co-production “Nagi Notes” will screen in the festival’s Horizon section.
New additions to SGIFF Pro this year include Off Campus, a four-day field trip pairing film school students with industry professionals; the Pitching Forum, aimed at connecting international projects with decision-makers and local co-production partners to position Singapore as a regional hub; and Parallax, a free interdisciplinary sidebar examining the intersection of filmmaking, AI and immersive technology, with participants from Amazon MGM Studios, SM Entertainment, Adobe, Largo.ai and Ubac Studio.
Founded in 1987, SGIFF is organized by Singapore International Film Festival Ltd., a nonprofit supported by the Infocomm Media Development Authority. SGIFF Pro comprises five programs in total: the Industry Days conference, the Asian Producers Network, the Pitching Forum, Off Campus and Parallax.
