Two estranged brothers take a road trip through Tibet together. In that high altitude country, the younger brother, Wut, is looking for a mythical place called Shambhala with the belief that its magical power will help cure his dying girlfriend. His older brother, Tin, has a painful past and assuages his soul by heavy drinking.Read More »
Korea 1953, the year of the greatest fighting and migration in the history of the land of the Morning Peace, the Thai independent army division, commanded by Colonel Prasit Reungyam was assigned to a special operation as an advance 9th infantry division. (under the United Nation’s security council treaty.) Major Pongpan’s injury was treated by a village girl names O- bunri, both fell in love, the major promised to love only her. That same year the war was over and Major Pongpan has to go back to Thailand, unable to take any time off to visit O-bunri for three years because of his duty in the army and his mother to take care of. When he finally decided to go to see her at her house on top of the mountain, there is an avalanche, everyone escaped except O- bunri who died in the mountain.Read More »
“A Room with a Coconut View” tells a story of Kanya, a tour guide and hotel rep automated voice, who leads her foreign automated-voice guest Alex through a deceptively aestheticised beach town in the east of Thailand. Dissatisfied by the sanitised, touristic images, Alex decides to explore alone. Local corruption becomes intertwined with the history of Thai cinema, and Alex begins to question how images have been used to mediate his understanding of the world.Read More »
By rethinking and redefining the term ‘movement’ through psychological, physical or political understandings, Squish. is a meditation on the self through lurid and liquid forms, filtered through both old and foreseeable technology informed by Thai animation history and contemporary culture, and a constant process of constructing and deforming new selves to simulate ‘movements’.—Locarno Film FestivalRead More »
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When it comes to impenetrable arthouse fare, Thai indie auteur Apichatpong Weerasethakul is widely regarded as something of a master. Two years ago, he arrived in London triumphantly with his Palme d’Or for the majestic Uncle Boonmee Who Can Recall His Past Lives (2010) and has returned this year with the not-quite-feature-length oddity, Mekong Hotel (2012), which rightly features in the LFF’s ‘Experimenta’ stream. Weerasethakul’s latest lingers instead on a series of moments all taking place around the titular hostelry sat on the bank of the enormous river which separates Thailand from Laos.Read More »
A romance between a soldier and a country boy, wrapped around a Thai folk-tale involving a shaman with shape-shifting abilities.Read More »
After witnessing a murder committed by her boyfriend’s brother, a young woman must choose between the love and the law.Read More »
Time Out Film Guide wrote:
An exceptionally beautiful movie set among Thailand’s Muslim minority in villages near the Malaysian border, and centering on a bright teenage kid forced to drop out of school and support his family by turning small-time smuggler. Impossible to convey its qualities without falling back on turn-off words like ‘charm’ and ‘sensitivity’, but the fact is that it succeeds in evoking the trials, terrors and excitements of childhood with an immediacy that’s both sweet and tough. There’s an eye-opening blend of universal and local elements: trouble with punks at a rock concert, daredevil feats on the roof of a moving train. And it offers the joy of seeing a director in full control of his medium. (Tony Rayns)Read More »
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Returning to Thailand after studying in the US, Ananda lands a part in a new film and finds himself swept up in a whirlwind of success. When American girlfriend Zoe turns up to visit, she soon begins to feel shut out and the distance between them grows as Ananda becomes increasingly absorbed with his role in the film. His attention soon turns to May from the film’s production crew, and so as one relationship fades, another ignites. All the while, Ananda finds himself revisiting his past and reflecting on his present – from the building he grew up in and a Bangkok he once knew, to two cultures that he is now caught between.Read More »