Guests to the opening ceremonies of this year's TIFF included Harrison Ford and Leonardo DiCaprio. A special tribute program focused on Marcello Mastroianni, who died the previous year.
For the Nippon Cinema Classics program, coordinator Sadao Yamane presented the results of a search, conducted in Russia, for Japanese films and gave the premiere screenings of four rediscovered Japanese films. Beginning this festival, Asian Film Week was renamed "Cinema Prism" and the scope of coverage and the number of films shown was expanded while still maintaining its Asian focus.
Earlier in the year, Shohei Imamura's The Eel received the Palme d'Or at Cannes while Naomi Kawase's Moe no Suzaku won the Camera d'Or, auspicious news for Japanese film industry members.

1.,Star Harrison Ford (center) and director Wolfgang Petersen (right), along with Seiko Matsuda at the opening screening of Air Force One. 2. Director Ann Hui (left) and lead actress Wu Chienlien at the press conference after the screening of Eighteen Springs. 3. Two winners of Tokyo Grand-prix: director Ademir Kenović of Perfect Circle, and director Caroline Link (center) and producer Jakob Claussen of Beyond Silence. 4. From right, Best Actor Award winner Koji Yakusho, director Kiyoshi Kurosawa and co-star Masato Hagiwara from Cure. 5. Krzysztof Zanussi, director of Competition film Our God’s Brother. 6. Director Abbas Kiarostami (left) and Robert Kramer attend the screening of documentary Locarno Half a Century: Thoughts about the Future. 7. The world premiere of Titanic. From right: director James Cameron and star Leonard DiCaprio.