Tokyo 2020 Official Film will have its world premiere at the renowned Cannes Film Festival

The Tokyo Olympic Games will get the red-carpet treatment at the Cannes Film Festival.

The prestigious event invited the official film of the 2020 Games by acclaimed Japanese director Naomi Kawase to make its world premiere on the French coast.

The film delivers a behind-the-scenes look at the Games, which were postponed a year before being held in 2021 during the COVID-19 pandemic. The film will be released in two parts. The first part, which is nearly two hours long, depicts the Games through the eyes of the athletes (Side A) and will be screened at Cannes on May 25. The second part, from the perspective of staff and volunteers (Side B), will be released around the world in June.

The Tokyo film will be paired with “Visions of Eight,” the official film of the Munich 1972 Olympics, in the “Cannes Classics” section.

”I am truly pleased that the film is invited to the Festival de Cannes,” said Kawase. “The Cannes Classics section is reserved for films that are recognized as cultural heritage. I believe this is a sign that the Cannes selection committee has appreciated this film as a testimony of the time, and sees it being passed on to future generations.”

”Visions of Eight” made its Cannes debut at the Festival in 1973. It will be screened on May 22 to commemorate the 50th anniversary of the Munich Olympics. The anthology film was created by eight famous directors and was voted best documentary at the Golden Globe Awards in 1974. A restored version will be viewed in Cannes.

Kawase was the youngest filmmaker to win the Camera d’Or award for best debut director at Cannes with her first feature, “Suzaku”, which was released in 1997. She is also the first Japanese woman to be appointed a UNESCO goodwill ambassador in recognition of her film work focusing on the stories of women across generations.

An emphasis on female athletes is one theme of Kawase’s Tokyo film.

She and her crew accumulated hundreds of hours of footage over a period of two years. The film was produced by the Kinoshita Group in collaboration with the Tokyo 2020 Organizing Committee and the International Olympic Committee (IOC). In the tradition of previous Olympic films, it focuses on human stories that go beyond the playing field.

”We are delighted that the Official Film of the Olympic Games Tokyo 2020 - Side A will have its world premiere at the Festival de Cannes,” said IOC President Thomas Bach. “The story of the Olympic Games Tokyo 2020 has been captured with characteristic style and flair by Naomi Kawase. The film presents the Games through a truly unique lens.”

Kawase joins the ranks of Olympic film creators, including Bud Greenspan, known for several documentaries including “16 Days of Glory” from 1984, and the directors who contributed to “Visions of Eight” such as Kon Ichikawa, Claude Lelouch, Miloš Forman, John Schlesinger, Arthur Penn, Mai Zetterling and Carlos Saura.

Yasmin Meichtry, Associate Director of the Olympic Foundation for Culture and Heritage (OFCH), which leads the IOC’s collaboration on official films, said the Tokyo film is a “return to a more cinematographic approach.”

She added that “strong themes have been expressed with nuance and subtlety in this film. We knew that Naomi Kawase’s vision would be characteristic and unique, which is even more important given the circumstances the Olympic Games Tokyo 2020 were held in.”

The Cannes Festival calls the documentary “a strong work on sport, Japan and the union of nations. A real message that goes beyond the physical exploit to mark souls. To discover absolutely on the big screen in Cannes to be swept away by its beauty.”

Lelouch will be in attendance for “Visions of Eight.” While filming his vision, his camera “lingers on the losers,” Cannes said. Forman filmed the decathlon, Ichikawa the 100 meters, Schlesinger the marathon and Zetterling the strongest athletes. “The film impressed with its ambition, it’s power and dynamism, each filmmaker having chosen a sport,” the festival said. “A must-see again in 2023, 50 years later.”

The Olympic Film Collection is composed of more than 50 feature-length films. Official films of every edition of the Games have been produced since 1912 in Stockholm and are part of the Olympics’ cultural legacy.