Tokyo Film Festival Adds Gap Financing Project Market

The Tokyo International Film Festival is to expand its market and business functions this year with the establishment of a gap financing project market. It will run Nov. 4-6 at the The Prince Park Tower Tokyo, where the festival’s associated TIFFCOM rights market will relocate.

Organizers said that they are launching a call for projects in both feature film and TV formats, with animation acceptable in both categories. Up to 20 projects will be accepted.

“The Tokyo Gap-Financing Market is a platform for selected projects in the categories of fiction films, fiction TV series, animated feature films and animated TV series. The market aims to support Japanese, Asian and international producers in securing financing for their projects through one-on-one meetings with professionals from around the globe, including producers, sales agents, distributors, financiers, broadcasters and other potential funders,” organizers explained.

Film projects will be accepted if they can show that they have 60% their financing in place. TV projects must have a minimum length of 5×26 minutes, and each project must have secured 50% of its budget and must prove that this financing is in place.

“The goal of the TGFM is to get the projects on track and, as a result, to produce higher quality films that will be selected by international film festivals and markets such as TIFF and TIFFCOM.”

The coronavirus has already caused the postponement of the Tokyo Olympic Games from this year to summer 2021. Tokyo’s festival and market organizers are banking on the coronavirus outbreak being largely under control by the autumn, allowing them to reunite the two events and move them to a more popular location.

Due to ceremonies for the new Emperor of Japan, in 2019, the TIFFCOM market had been completed before the beginning of the festival events. For the past three years, the market had been held in a shopping and convention center in Ikebukuro.

Japan has recorded 14,088 confirmed cases of the coronavirus. There have been 430 fatalities.