LOS ANGELES, Oct 13 — The Tokyo International Film Festival (TIFF) has confirmed Martin Scorsese and Japanese director Kiyoshi Kurosawa as this year’s Samurai Award recipients with the award to be presented at the festival’s closing ceremony on November 3.

The accolade, which launched in 2014 and has so far been awarded to one local and one internationally renowned director each year, aims to honour "achievements by veteran filmmakers who continue to create groundbreaking films that carve paths to a new era in cinema”.

While Scorsese, whose most recent film Silence was inspired by the work of Japanese novelist Shusaku Endo, will not attend due to prior commitments; Kurosawa, whose new film The Woman in the Silver Plate premiered at this year’s Toronto festival, will be both at the ceremony and a talk event, "In Person: Kiyoshi Kurosawa” (via The Hollywood Reporter).

Previous recipients of the Samurai Award include John Woo, Tim Burton, Yoji Yamada and Takeshi Kitano. — AFP-Relaxnews