A time-travel adventure that takes place during the Cold War when a US military base in Thailand was testing the Taklee Genesis, a warp-speed teleporter even though it had not yet been fully developed. After the war, the Taklee Genesis was left behind in Thailand and was being illegally used by someone.
Jenjira, a Thai widow, travels to the ancient Buddhist temple Sigiriya in Sri Lanka to scatter her husband’s ashes. As her visions blur time and space, she is swept into a journey through across dimensions.
Jan is a boy growing up in 1930s Siam in a wealthy, dysfunctional family where sex has a huge impact on everyone's lives. Jan is viewed by his father as cursed, since his mother died giving birth to him.
Suffering from acute kidney failure, Boonmee has chosen to spend his final days surrounded by his loved ones in the countryside. Surprisingly, the ghost of his deceased wife appears to care for him, and his long lost son returns home in a non-human form. Contemplating the reasons for his illness, Boonmee treks through the jungle with his family to a mysterious hilltop cave—the birthplace of his first life.
Six directors, six independent films, six visions on the state of the world. Each carrying a unique and personal interpretation of a specific experience, their crossover creates new space for a dynamic and radical inquisitive reflection.
A gang of local thugs come in and start roughing up the customers and get abusive with the daughter. Suddenly, an elaborately coifed and tastefully dressed woman shows up and rescues the young woman and her father from further harm. This is Iron Pussy.
One of the ingrained rituals in Thai society is the blessing automatically given before certain ceremonies and events such as the playing of the Royal Anthem in movie theaters before feature presentations. This short presents a "Cinema Anthem" which comically praises and blesses the feature to come.
"Fever Room" features Jenjira (Jen) and Banlop (Itt), two of Apichatpong’s regular actors who also appear in his film, "Cemetery of Splendour". Like the film, this projection-performance presents the layers of reality and fantasy. Apichatpong fuses his memories with the actors’ and fictionalises the narrative. Here the people takes refuge in dreams while their land is on a brink of collapse, echoing Thailand’s present state of military dictatorship.
Diseases and a Hundred Year Period is a film-tract that comes to us from Thailand. It is directed by Sompot Chidgasornpongse, Weerasethakul's assistant on several of his films (including Syndromes and a Century), in reaction to the censorship of Syndromes and a Century in Thailand.
A group of students discovers a mysterious phone number that grants their wishes. But they quickly learn their new-found luck has deadly consequences.
Featuring seven stories from seven auteurs from around the world, the film chronicles this unprecedented moment in time, and is a true love letter to the power of cinema and its storytellers.
In 1946, just after World War 2, bandits rule the countryside of Siam. The notorious Bai rises to become the king of bandits and police chief Yodying has been ordered to apprehend Bai dead or alive.
In a hospital, ten soldiers are being treated for a mysterious sleeping sickness. In a story in which dreams can be experienced by others, and in which goddesses can sit casually with mortals, a nurse learns the reason why the patients will never be cured, and forms a telepathic bond with one of them.
A story about director Apichatpong Weerasethakul’s parents who were both doctors, and his memories of growing up in a hospital environment.
A short film directed by Apichatpong Weerasethakul in collaboration with composer Rafiq Bhatia and the Cincinnati Symphony Orchestra.
Like Kamanita, the unchanged Morakot is a star burdened with (or fueled by) memories. Apichatpong collaborated with his three regular actors, who recounted their dreams, hometown life, bad moments, and love poems, to re-supply the hotel with new memories.
A recreation of an event to commemorate the presence of the dead and the decayed memories of the living, of filmmaking
This film depicts Bunleua Sulilat’s temple/sculpture garden 'Sala Keoku', located in northern Thailand. Passages of blackness sporadically dissolve under the fitful internal illumination of sparklers, which light up to reveal Sulilat’s unorthodox temple populated with a fantastical concrete menagerie of beasts and figures; the sculptures range from the broad, whale-like contours of a frog’s face, to a cavalcade of dogs on mopeds, to a pair of skeletons partially embracing as if sitting for a double portrait. These images are interspersed with those of an older Thai couple mysteriously wandering around the temple like wraiths, the woman’s plodding progress hampered by the use of crutches.
In Thailand, an illegal immigrant from Myanmar with a mysterious skin rash, his girlfriend, and her friend visit the doctor's before spending the afternoon on individual and collective adventures.
Glistening objects from a jewelry collection inspired by carnivorous plants are transformed into a colourful sea of garden creatures through hand-drawn animations of roots, insects and various other organisms. A loving tribute to Weerasethakul's mother's garden. Commissioned by Dior; first presented at Musée de l’Orangerie, Jardin des Tuileries, Paris, to mark the opening of a new set of jewellery designed by Victoire de Castellane, 27 February 2007.
ABLAZE premiered at the 27th Singapore Film Festival, November 24, 2016
Canadian actor and filmmaker Connor Jessup (Closet Monster, Falling Skies) profiles Apichatpong Weerasethakul, a maverick of Thai cinema who explores the slippery nature of time and consciousness with a sublimely idiosyncratic, often surreal approach to film form.
Shifting between fact and fiction in a hotel situated along the Mekong River, a filmmaker rehearses a movie expressing the bonds between a vampire-like mother and daughter.
A woman lies awake at night. Nearby, a set of theatre backdrops unspools itself, unveiling two alternate landscapes. Upon the woman’s blue sheet, a flicker of light reflects and illuminates her realm of insomnia.
A diary of the time Apichatpong Weerasethakul visited a newlywed couple near the Mekong River.
