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We could tie ourselves in knots, draw party lines, and make blood oaths declaring cinema’s greatest-evers: directors, actors, screenwriters, even studios or entire national output. I have rarely heard a conversation for greatest-ever producer, so allow me to propose that this title belongs––so clearly it’s unprecedented among such conversation––to Paulo Branco. He deserves consideration for decades spent shepherding the visions of Raúl Ruiz and Manoel De Oliveira alone; remove them from the equation and there’s still major films by David Cronenberg, Chantal Akerman, Pedro Costa, Wim Wenders, or João César Monteiro, to say nothing of Christophe Honoré, Rita Azevedo Gomes, or Mathieu Amalric, or films whose exposure is still so limited they’ve not yet pierced any cinephile canon, however deserving they may be.

When I saw Branco would be at this year’s Tokyo International Film Festival on behalf of The Englishman’s Papers, a new feature he’s produced,...

In a year in which two of world cinema’s oldest industries, Japan and Italy, have signed a long-awaited co-production treaty, jury members at this year’s Tokyo International Film Festival (TIFF) were talking up the importance of both film history and the theatrical experience on the first full day of the festival.

After praising TIFF for its selection of established and emerging Asian filmmakers, Hong Kong actor and jury president Tony Leung Chiu-wai also pointed to the festival’s in-depth programmes of classic movies observing that they play an important role in “introducing Italian directors like [Federico] Fellini and Japanese filmmakers like [Akira] Kurosawa to younger audiences.

“They are not only introducing what is current, but also the vast history of cinema, which is a wonderful opportunity for audiences to learn about the past,” the star of In The Mood For Love and Shang-Chi And The Legend Of The Ten Rings said.