2023 Taipei Golden Horse Film Festival (TGHFF) announced its Filmmaker-In-Focus this year, Koji YAKUSHO. The newly crowned Cannes Best Actor will present in person the winning film Perfect Days (2023), helmed by renowned German director Wim WENDERS. TGHFF will also screen erotic classic Lost Paradise (1997), as well as five films chosen by Koji YAKUSHO himself, including Kamikaze Taxi (1995), Shall We Dance (1996), Cure (1997), Eureka (2000) and The Woodsman and the Rain (2011). With these seven films, cinephiles will be able to witness the charm and versatile acting of the legendary actor.

Koji YAKUSHO is one of the iconic actors in contemporary Japan, with works in film, TV drama, stage play and animation voice acting. Once a civil servant, YAKUSHO was introduced in the late 70s by Tatsuya NAKADAI, the long-time collaborating actor working with Akira KUROSAWA, and thereby began his acting career for over four decades. YAKUSHO first made a name for himself with taiga drama, and also appeared in Tampopo directed by Juzo ITAMI. In Kamikaze Taxi by Masato HARADA, YAKUSHO’s brilliant portrayal of the taxi driver trapped in between politicians and mafia gangs has won him the Best Actor award at Mainichi Film Award.

YAKUSHO has been nominated for the Japan Academy Film Prize for 23 times, including seven consecutive nominations in the Best Leading Actor category, winning three awards for Best Leading Actor and one for Best Supporting Actor. In the 90s, he swept all over Asia with Shall We Dance and Lost Paradise; the former started a sensation of ballroom dancing and was made into a Hollywood adaptation, and the latter created a buzz over the onscreen affairs with Hitomi KUROKI. TGHFF will screen the 2019 international version of Lost Paradise, in which the erotic scenes previously darkened to fit the rating are now aflame with its original look.

YAKUSHO has created a diversified persona on screen: he could be the tough criminal police in Kiyoshi KUROSAWA’s Cure, the survivor from a bloody hijack in Shinji AOYAMA’s Eureka, or the humorous and devoted woodsman in Shuichi OKITA’s The Woodsman and the Rain. He also appears in Hollywood productions like Memoirs of a Geisha and Babel.

Perfect Days is the latest work of Koji YAKUSHO, a collaboration with Wim WENDERS, in which the daily lives of a janitor have triggered inspirational philosophy of life. The subtle and affecting performance has won him the Best Actor award at Cannes, and this film has been chosen as Japan’s submission for Best International Feature Film at the Academy Awards. YAKUSHO will attend the Golden Horse Film Festival in person to present the film.

The 2023 Golden Horse Film Festival will be held between November 9^th and 26^th; Audiences’ Guide will be held in the evening of October 27^th and tickets on sale at 1PM, October 28^th on the official website. More info and details of the line-up will be released, please stay tuned.