By KENJI KOMINE/ Staff Writer
September 13, 2020 at 16:55 JST
Kiyoshi Kurosawa received the Silver Lion award for best director for “Wife of a Spy” at the Venice Film Festival in Venice on Sept. 12, becoming only the second Japanese director to be so honored.
Kurosawa follows Takeshi Kitano, who was awarded the best director prize for “Zatoichi” in 2003.
In a video message during the awards ceremony, Kurosawa, 65, said, “I have been involved in directing films for many years, but winning the prize at this age came as a nice present.”
Kurosawa and the cast did not attend the festival due to the new coronavirus pandemic.
“Wife of a Spy,” Kurosawa’s first historical film, revolves around Satoko Fukuhara, played by Yu Aoi, as the protagonist set in Kobe right before the Pacific War in 1941.
As Japan heads to war, she and her husband, Yusaku, played by Issey Takahashi, are chased around by military police who suspect that the couple are working as spies.
In fact, Yusaku was working behind the scenes to leak a top government secret discovered in Manchuria, where a puppet state of Japan was located.
When his film was screened at the festival on Sept. 9, Kurosawa said during an online news conference from Tokyo, “I long had a desire to do a project describing individuals during the wartime, and I could finally achieve it.”
Kurosawa, who is from Kobe, debuted as a film director in 1983, releasing the blue movie “Kandagawa Pervert Wars.”
He has directed many films of various genres, including thrillers and horrors.
His “Tokyo Sonata” was awarded the Prix du Jury at the Cannes Film Festival in 2008. In 2015, he won the Best Director award for “Journey to the Shore” at the same film festival.
“Wife of a Spy” premieres in Japan on Oct. 16.
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Director Kiyoshi Kurosawa speaks from Tokyo during an online news conference on Sept. 9 for the Venice Film Festival, in which his “Wife of a Spy” was entered. (Noriki Ishitobi)
