O Mipo Shares 2026 Kurosawa Akira Award — SkimNews
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- O Mipo shared the 2026 Kurosawa Akira Award with Iranian filmmaker Mohammad Rasoulof at Tuesday’s ceremony at the Imperial Hotel, held under the aegis of the 39th Tokyo International Film Festival; the honor recognizes filmmakers whose substantial achievements represent cinema’s future.
- O Mipo returned to features with Living in Two Worlds in 2024 and How Dare You? in 2025 after stepping back in 2015 to raise her two sons; at 49, she says she still has half a century left and is “making up for lost time” after the award put her back on track.
- O Mipo reached three milestones before her 2015 feature break: her screenplay The Sakai’s Happiness won the 2005 Sundance/NHK International Filmmakers Award, Here Comes the Bride, My Mom! took the 2010 Shindo Kaneto Awards grand prize, and The Light Shines Only There was Japan’s submission for the 2014 Academy Award for best foreign language film.
- O Mipo says Japan’s film industry has seen many more female staff and directors since she entered as a crew member in 1999, while a director-led pyramid has given way to what she calls “respect training” and broadly equal rights.
- O Mipo says nearly 700 films are now released in Japan annually, but the overseas market has not taken off; she wants more Japanese films to reach festivals and says she wants to work in Hollywood someday.
- O Mipo says she does not believe any Japanese director can make a living solely from features and must also work in streaming, television dramas or commercials; after turning down commercial offers to focus on movies, she says Japanese projects pay not a single yen at the planning stage, while Hollywood directors are usually contracted and paid from that stage.
- O Mipo calls AI an inseparable part of filmmaking and says consulting it can lead to richer results, but she does not think machines will replace human filmmakers if creators keep asking what they themselves want to do.
Why it matters: For O Mipo, the 2026 award follows features released in 2024 and 2025 and comes as she states an ambition to work in Hollywood. Her figures—nearly 700 Japanese releases annually but little overseas uptake—and her claim that Japanese projects pay nothing at planning stage expose the material gap behind that ambition.
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