Naoto Mitake Selected as Fabulous Five at ADFEST 2019

March 8, 2019

Tokyo – We are delighted to announce that AOI Pro.’s young director Naoto Mitake, who is currently working at our group company in Malaysia, Directors Think Tank, has been selected as one of the "Fabulous Five" directors hosted by ADFEST.

Naoto replaces one of the five directors who was previously announced as a 2019 Fabulous Five Director and is now unable to attend ADFEST 2019. He was next in line having received the sixth highest score for his film script, and this makes AOI Pro. to have three Fabulous Five Directors this year, including Rin Soejima and Tomu Yamaguchi.

"Fabulous Five", formerly known as "Fabulous Four", is an annual short film competition for young commercial film directors in Asia Pacific and Middle East. The program was expanded to “Fabulous Five” reflecting the success of the directors who have screened their films at ADFEST, giving more directors the chance to make their first big break.

Each applicant submits a script inspired by the year’s festival theme. This year’s theme is "TMRRW.TDAY" and 5 directors’ scripts were selected by the Film Craft & New Director Jury out of total 49 submissions from 11 cities in the Asia Pacific and Middle East.

"The Fabulous Five 2019" session will be held on March 21, 15:40 pm where all the 5 directors’ works to be screened. The session will be moderated by Ali Brown, Partner and Executive Producer at PRETTYBIRD in Los Angeles.

About Naoto Mitake

A Japanese director who started his career in New York as a full-time TV editor at night and assisting independent filmmaker at daytime. He went back to Tokyo and joined AOI Pro. as a planner/director in 2017. One of his commercials “Tokyo Train Story” was one of the finalists at “Brain Online Video Award 2018”. After joining Directors Think Tank, AOI Pro. Group company in 2018, he managed to direct different varieties of commercials for major brands such as Prudential, Tokopedia, CIMB, Yeo’s, Toyota, Pocky, etc. The works he directs expand now not only in Japan, but all over Asia. His preference is “DRY HUMOR” regardless of the genre. He always wants to collaborate with people regardless of the country, with all the different visual contents, and with their unique ideas.

About ADFEST

Founded in 1998, ADFEST is one of the biggest advertising festivals in Asia. This year it will be held for 4 days from March 20th to 23rd in Pattaya, Thailand. In 2018, about 1,200 delegates from 61 cities attended the festival.


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