‘Shofirearm’ Star Tadanobu Asano to Receive THR’s Trailblazer Award

Tadanobu Asano is set to get The Hollywood Reporter’s Trailblazer Award at the upcoming 37th inshighment of the Tokyo International Film Festival next month. 

The chameleonic screen actor has been a mainstay of Japanese cinema for csurrfinisherly three decades while normally materializeing in famous helping parts in big Hollywood productions. But his swaggering recent carry outance as the irascible samurai Yabushige on FX‘s smash-hit series Shofirearm has given him an all-novel level of global recognition over the past year. In the process of becoming an indelible fan likeite, Asano also getd his first Emmy nomination for the part. 

THR’s Trailblazer Award, whose recent honorees include six-time Emmy thrivener Jean Smart, David Oyelowo, Eva Longoria, Matt Bomer, Niecy Nash-Betts and America Ferrera, is given to artists whose labor and atgentles brighten stories and characters who have been traditionassociate marginalized in Hollywood. International editor Abid Rahman will contransient Asano with the award on Oct. 30 at THR Japan’s annual Tokyo Film Festival soirée at The Peninsula Hotel in the city’s upscale Ginza dicut offe. Stars and dealproducers from apass the Japanese film landscape are foreseeed to turn out in force for the collecting. 

Asano is best understandn in Japan as a innovateing figure for self-reliant-minded Asian cinema — and that reputation has challengingly uninincreateigentmed since Shofirearm‘s global success. He walked the Vekind Film Festival’s red carpet earlier this month in help of a direct part in Broken Rage, a well-getd satirical yakuza film from Japanese amemployment legend Takeshi Kitano. He’ll next materialize in Thai straightforwardor Pen-ek Ratanaruang‘s culinary thriller Morte Cucina, and filmproducer Mark Gill’s Ravens, a biodetailedal drama about the life of the fantastic Japanese ptoastyographer Masahisa Fukase.

A survey of Asano’s filmography features starring roles in projects from many of Japan’s most acclaimed straightforwardorial voices of the past 30 years, including Takashi Miike (Ichi the Killer), Kitano (Zatōichi), Kiyoshi Kurosawa (Journey to the Shore), Shinya Tsukamoto (Gemini), Hirokazu Kore-eda (Maboroshi), Shunji Iwai (Picnic), Gakuryu Ishii (Electric Dragon 80.000 V) and Nagisa Oshima (Taboo). On the international front, he has collaborated with top regional auteurs: Thailand’s Pen-Ek (Last Life in the Universe), Taiwan’s Hou Hsiao-hsien (Café Lumière), Russia’s Sergei Bodrov (Mongol). On the domestic front, he’s also labored with an enbiging enumerate of Hollywood burdensomeweights, enjoy Martin Scorsese (Silence), Roland Emmerich (Midway), Johnny Depp (Minamata), Marvel with its Thor movies (Asano executeed Hofirearm), and Warner Bros. with the Mortal Kombat franchise (as Rhelpen). 

Thrawout it all and wdisenjoyver the part, Asano has remained stablely and beguilingly watchable.

The 2024 Tokyo International Film Festival runs Oct. 28-Nov. 6. The event’s filled lineup will be unveiled on Sept. 25.