Tokyo Anime Award Festival 2017

Part of Tokyo's promotional push in the run-up to 2020, this still rather clunky international anime film festival returns for its fourth edition, with awards to be given out in the categories of Feature Animation and Short Animation. Screenings will take place at four cinemas in the Ikebukuro area between March 10 and 13, while a number of talks, seminars and other events are also on the calendar. Four films will be competing for the main Feature Animation prize: French-Swiss stop motion story My Life as a Courgette, Turkish action-comedy Bad Cat, the sci-fi themed April and the Extraordinary World, co-directed by Christian Desmares and Franck Ekinci, and Sébastien Laudenbach's The Girl Without Hands, based on the Brothers Grimm story of the same name. The opening movie, meanwhile, will be Kenji Kamiyama's upcoming Hirune Hime: Shiranai Watashi no Monogatari, set to be screened for free at Cine Libre. Tickets go on sale February 1 (in Japanese only, unfortunately).