Photo/Illutration “Numb” ((c) 2025 “Numb” Production Committee)

Japanese director Takuya Uchiyama’s autobiographical “Shibire” (“Numb”) took home the second-place Special Jury Prize in the 10-film competition at the 26th Tokyo Filmex international film festival.

Co-hosted by The Asahi Shimbun Co., the festival introducing films by up-and-coming Asian directors wrapped on Nov. 30.

“Numb” is an autobiographical family drama set to be theatrically released in 2026. It is the fourth feature film by Uchiyama, who won several newcomer’s awards for “Sasaki in My Mind.”

Set in the capital of Niigata Prefecture where the director grew up, the story centers around a boy named Daichi struggling to find a place to belong to while being tormented by his father’s violence and neglected by his mother.

Takumi Kitamura plays the grown-up version of the main character.

“It was the first screenplay I ever wrote in my life. I was in my 20s and didn’t know anything about cinema,” Uchiyama said onstage after the official screening. “I wanted to convey an emotion similar to pain, instead of sorrow, so I incorporated it into the title.”

Argentine director Matias Pineiro, who served as one of the festival’s international jurors, praised the film during the awards ceremony, saying that the film was rough-hewn but compelling.

“I aimed to shed light on the poverty in the hearts of people of all classes and celebrate that,” Uchiyama said.

The festival’s Grand Prize was awarded to Indian director Rohan Parashuram Kanawade’s “Cactus Pears,” which follows a young man living in a big city who returns to his hometown to attend his father's funeral.

As he is urged by his relatives to get married, the man shares this pressure with his childhood friend and deepens the bond with him.

Swiss director and juror Ramon Zurcher had a poetic view of the work, saying its quiet whispers sublimate into a powerful cry for a world where anyone can breathe freely.

The Special Mention and the Student Jury Prize went to Georgian director Alexandre Koberidze’s “Dry Leaf.”

The story revolves around a man who travels across the country in search of his daughter who mysteriously vanished. The use of an old cellphone camera colors the film’s landscape shots with an idyllic look with a hint of post-apocalyptic ambience.

Taiwanese American director Tsou Shih-Ching earned the Audience Award for “Left-Handed Girl,” which she describes as a love letter to Taipei where she grew up.

The movie portrays a single mother and her two daughters trying hard to make a life for themselves in a picturesque Taipei night market.

The younger daughter whose left-handedness is “corrected” is a reflection of the director herself. Many audience members were also charmed by this cute younger character and how she saves her family in a dramatic twist.

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