THE 34th Tokyo International Film Festival kicked off in the Japanese capital Saturday night on a distinctly optimistic note, as jury president Isabelle Huppert walked the red carpet alongside a slew of local stars. It was Japan’s first glitzy red carpet occasion for an international movie premiere since the start of the pandemic — and it arrived at a time of widespread relief among the Japanese public as the country’s COVID-19 infections rate fell to new lows. “This year again we are opening the festival during the pandemic and there were concerns again whether we could actually hold this event at all,” said Tokyo festival chairman Hiroyasu Ando from the stage at the opening ceremony. “But the infection numbers have fallen and we can welcome this large number of guests here today.” The festival officially opened with the Japan premiere of Clint Eastwood’s neo-Western “Cry Macho.” Tokyo is slated to exhibit just over 100 films this year, including gala screenings of Wes Anderson’s “French Dispatch,” Paolo Sorrentino’s “The Hand of God,” Edgar Wright’s “Last Night in Soho,” Jane Campion’s Venice best director winner “The Power of the Dog,” Apichatpong Weerasethakul’s Tilda Swinton-starrer “Memoria” and the late Benny Chan’s Chinese blockbuster “Raging Fire,” among others. The festival’s main competition section, to be judged by Huppert’s jury, includes 15 competition titles. Among them: two anticipated world premieres from the Philippines, Brillante Mendoza’s latest, “Payback,” and 29-year-old talent Mikhail Red’s revenge film “Arisaka”; “Third Time Lucky” from Japan’s Tadashi Nohara, who co-wrote Kiyoshi Kurasawa’s latest feature “Wife of a Spy,” which won the best director award in Venice in 2020; and three features from female directors. The festival will close Nov. 8 with Stephen Chbosky’s “Dear Evan Hansen.”(SD-Agencies) | 