Thai

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Are you afraid of death? According to statistics, two people on earth die each second. Die Tomorrow zeroes in on the last day of its protagonists, each of whom have no idea of their fate. The film picks up on six everyday situations and turns them into moving stories. With true lightness of touch, director Nawapol Thamrongrattanarit forges shots that play out over considerable time and then combines them with documentary-like interview footage, news reports, sound recordings, statistics and archive material, thus creating an elaborate essay. Read More »

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Set in the deep South of Thailand, where separatist violence has claimed nearly 7,000 lives in the past 13 years, The Island Funeral is a meditation on faith, identity and a place uncharted by any map. Laila, with her brother and his friend, head from Bangkok on a thousand-kilometer road trip to Pattani. Along the way they meet Surin, a soldier from the Northeast. Together they journey into the southernmost part of the country in search of lost history and half-remembered memories.Read More »

Santi, a poor 10- year-old blind boy who lives with his father. Vina takes a pity on him and tries to protect him from the bullying of Krai. Santi’s father send him to stay with Luang Ta, a respectable monk, hopefully that he would learn the Buddhist lessons and by doing good deed, he could regain his eyesight.

When they have grown up, Santi and Vina become lover. Krai feels jealous because he also love Vina. Krai asks his parent to make a marriage proposal to Vina. Vina decides to run away with Santi. However, they are finally caught and Santi is severe beaten.Read More »

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The the visually stunning new Thai relationship drama Malila: The Farewell Flower, former gay lovers Shane and Pitch reunite after years apart and try to heal the wounds of their past. Shane is haunted by the tragic death of his daughter, while Pitch suffers a grave illness, rejecting medical treatment as painful and ineffective.

A talented artist, Pitch creates beautiful structures made out of flowers and banana leaves as a way to cope with his deteriorating health. Meanwhile, Shane trains to become a Buddhist monk, in an effort to build karma for Pitch… to either keep him alive or to help him along in his afterlife.Read More »

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Taiwan-based Burmese filmmaker Midi Z produces his best work yet with “The Road to Mandalay.” Returning to narrative features after the documentaries “Jade Miners” and “City of Jade,” Z maintains his focus on Burmese exiles with a low-key, high-impact love story about two illegal immigrants with very different ideas about making money and starting a new life in Bangkok. Very well performed by Z’s regular actress Wu Ke-xi and established Taiwanese star Kai Ko (“You Are the Apple of My Eye”), “The Road to Mandalay” is bound to travel far and wide on the fest circuit following a prestigious hat-trick of selections in Venice, Toronto, and Busan. Taiwan and Hong Kong theatrical release is set for Dec. 9.Read More »

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The unconscious dream state that connects each of Apichatpong Weerasethakul’s films begins in his latest when frequent collaborator, Jenjira Pongpas (Her characters’ names devolving film to film from ‘Pa Jane’, ‘Jen’ and now simply ‘Je’), stumbles into the frame with her ft. high platform sandal keeping her stumpy left leg in proportion with her right. This familiar image is the proverbial blanket Weerasethakul pulls over his audience, tucking the viewers into his familiar world, allowing for a communal drift into his drowsy landscapes. It’s only a testament to Weesrasethakul’sself awareness as a filmmaker that he has a narcoleptic soldier drop into a lethargic mess as we see him glance upon a movie screen, reflecting how he makes his films onto the characters who inhabit them. This scene, among others, provides a self reflexive exploration of Weerasethakul’s oeuvre, adding to a film that exudes more passion, thoughtfulness and complexity than any of his other major works.Read More »

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Interracial love, religious cults, hi-so culture (Thai high society) and an appetite for raw offal enrich and distract Thai auteur Pen-ek Rataranuang’s classic noir about a marriage turned murderous. Mystery and danger percolate in “Samui Song” all the way till the elliptical ending, which leaves audiences with a sense of lingering disquiet. However, there’s a certain spark missing both from the characters and the overall muffled tone. Heading to Toronto after opening the Venice Days section, the film should pique buyer interest based on the enduring popularity of the writer-director’s mid-career work, “Last Life in the Universe” and “Invisible Waves.”Read More »

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Tam, a timid loner, is bullied regularly by his fellow pupils at school. He is met with similar rejection and suspicion within the narrow confines of his parents’ dingy home, where his father beats him. One day Tam arranges online to meet Phum at a derelict swimming pool. They are both looking for sex, but their encounter leaves them with a feeling of comfort and security. A close bond develops between the two boys and, before long, they are roaming the rubbish heaps and dark corners of the city together, day and night. Phum opens a door for Tam, revealing a fantastical parallel universe full of spirits and dangerous encounters. Although he feels safe and loved for the first time in his life, Tam can no longer differentiate between dream and reality and finds himself increasingly drawn into a spiral of paranoia and violence. In his feature debut Boonyawatana leads his protagonist into an ambiguous microcosm full of chasms, at the same time cleverly toying with the conventions of different genres.Read More »

from Pan Asian Film Festival 2014
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Portraying a character struggling to make sense of her life as it threatens to spin out of control, Nawapol’s brilliant second film creates an inventive narrative of an uncontrollable life through a brilliantly modern artistic concept: to adapt a Twitter stream into a fictional film.

The director used 410 real Tweets from an anonymous girl as a springboard to create a fantasy world of a contemporary Asian teenager, and the results are funny and strange, a conflation of modern Thai teenage life, Wes Anderson-esque humour, and the possibilities for escape offered by the digital world.Read More »