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Veteran Thai filmmaker Pantham Thongsang has rejoined Tifa Studios to spearhead international co-productions as Thai authorities gear up to enhance the country’s global competitiveness through soft power.

Pantham, who has 30 years of producing and directing experience, is a pioneer of international co-productions for Thailand, having produced through Tifa 2004’s Cannes award-winner Tropical Malady and 2006’s Syndromes And A Century. Both films were directed by Thai auteur Apichatpong Weerasethakul.

Pantham was most recently HBO’s country lead for original productions in Thailand and a senior executive at Thailand’s The One Enterprise public limited company, responsible for the launch of...

Eight years ago, the most famous Thai director in the world told IndieWire that was finished making movies in Thailand. After the release of his haunting “Cemetery of Splendour,” Apichatpong Weerasethakul said the threat of censorship had become too much for him. “I’ll say about a topic, ‘Hey, you cannot say that because you’ll be in jail,’” he said. “I’ve started to feel suffocated by this limitation.”

Weerasethakul — he goes by “Joe,” perhaps as an act of mercy for Westerners who struggle to pronounce his name — has only started the international phase of his career. “Memoria,” his first movie made outside of Thailand, became the country’s official Oscar submission in 2021. He’s already planning another one in Sri Lanka.

Yet Thailand remains the one place he feels most comfortable even as his work takes him elsewhere. He was calling from the northeastern region of the country while visiting his mother.

Thailand’s film censors have upset the release of local horror movie “Hoon Payon,” which should have arrived in cinemas pn Thursday.

The film had a successful world premiere screening on Tuesday at a gala in Bangkok. But censors have since intervened to demand five scenes be cut and to impose a 20+ rating on the Five Star Production picture.

The rating means that spectators must be age 20 or older, thus excluding the film’s key teenage demographic, and it obliges cinema operators to check the ID cards of all patrons.

The film’s story involves a man who travels to a village in a border region where his brother, a novice Buddhist monk, has been accused of murder. As more bodies pile up, the man questions the villagers’ blind faith in a supposedly protective doll or mannequin.

The scenes that have caused offense involve the fictional monk engaging in heated...

After last month kicked off with Sight and Sound unveiling of their once-in-a-decade greatest films of all-time poll, detailing the 100 films that made the cut that were led by Chantal Akerman’s Jeanne Dielman, 23, quai du Commerce, 1080 Bruxelles, they’ve now unveiled the full critics’ top 250. While the discourse up until now has featured many wondering why certain directors were totally absent and why other films that previously made the top 100 were left out, more clarity has arrived with this update.

Check out some highlights we clocked below, the full list here, and return on March 2 when all ballots and comments will be unveiled.

The films closest to making the top 100 were Rio Bravo, The House Is Black, and Vagabond, which tied for #103. Four directors absent in the top 100––Terrence Malick, Paul Thomas Anderson, Hou Hsiao-hsien, and Jacques Demy––have two films each in the top 250: The Tree of Life...

“We use ambience to tell the story. It’s more important than music. Ambience.” —Akritchalerm KalayanamitrApichatpong Weerasethakul’s Memoria starts with a sonic sensation, a “bang” that wakes up Tilda Swinton’s Jessica Holland. The noise propels her body and thus the narrative, inasmuch as it sets the viewer’s trajectory onto the realms of sound. In other words, the film becomes all about sound; about hearing, listening and feeling; about the whole notions of the smallest details the sound can produce, which we, the viewers-listeners, microdose along with the screening. To talk about the sonic sphere of Apichatpong’s works, I met with Akritchalerm Kalayanamitr, one of the most active sound designers in South East Asia, who worked with the Thai director on most of his films and art installations, including the latest one, Memoria.The conversation started about a vinyl compilation, “Metaphors.” “A happy customer!”, said Akritchalerm (also...

The presence or absence of sound in Apichatpong Weerasethakul’s films is a fundamental element, as is its timing. Sound is a character alluding to memory, touch, the erotic, the urban and natural world. At just under two hours, this mix is a dreamscape journey into Apichatpong’s cinema sonics. From the opening edit, we’re surrounded by the luscious sounds of Syndromes and a Century (2006), traveling through the Thai director’s singular vision of place, love, desire, family, the body, history, and the conscious versus unconscious. Moments of song or dialogue tend to break the chapters. A jolt of song at the titles (not necessarily approaching at the presumed moment) making way for the next act, a motorcycle ride, or a much-favored exercise class, music bursts out momentarily relieving ambient trance. Here there's a focus on several films, Syndromes and a Century, Blissfully Yours (2002), Tropical Malady (2004) and Mysterious Object at Noon...

In remaking local versions of Thai and Chinese language content Bangkok- and Beijing-based Artop Media may have lucked onto one of the hottest trends of the moment in the Asian TV space.

That’s because Thai content is increasingly successful on mainland Chinese streaming networks, and, as multiple speakers have noted in the first two day of FilMart, Thai content is increasingly working across East and Southeast Asia too.

At FilMart this week Artop is pitching currently in-production series “My Lucky Star” an adaptation of an earlier Taiwanese show. The new version is directed by Pantham Thonsang, well known as a producer and line producer of films including “Shutter,” and Apichatpong Weerasethakul’s “Tropical Malady” and “Syndromes and a Century.” It stars Thanapat Kawila and Anchasa Mongkhonsamai (Bifern) as the male and female leads.

For 2021, it also has 2021 “Meow Ears up!” which was previously a novel in China and an...

With readers turning to their home viewing options more than ever, this daily feature provides one new movie each day worth checking out on a major streaming platform.

To fill the void left by the absence of this year’s Cannes Film Festival, for the next two weeks, this column will be dedicated to films that premiered at the festival over the course of seven decades.

Ghost monkeys. Reincarnation. Catfish cunnilingus. The inspired weirdness is so off the charts with “Uncle Boonmee Who Can Recall His Past Lives” it almost sounds like a lark. Instead, Apichatpong Weerasethakul’s mesmerizing Palme d’Or winner redefines the notion of “movie magic,” by conjuring images and experiences that transcend the boundaries of the screen. Ten years later, it remains a haunting, wondrous incantation — a movie that gives new meaning to fantasy filmmaking by refusing to escape the world, and instead attempting to see...

Thai director Apichatpong Weerasethakul has always been a filmmaker working outside the margins, so it seems appropriate that he’s found poetry in the isolation of the ongoing quarantine. That update comes courtesy of distributor Strand Releasing, which asked filmmakers, artists, and friends, how their lives were affected by the pandemic. The project is part of a collaboration with Criterion, which hosted the the “30/30 Vision” anthology celebrating Strand’s 30th anniversary last fall.

As shared exclusively with IndieWire, the “Tropical Malady” and “Uncle Boonmee Who Can Recall His Past Lives” director has a message for fans from Thailand, where he lives and works. See below.

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I have a marian plum tree at my home. Previously I didn’t pay much attention to it because I was mostly away.

Thai independent filmmaker Apichatpong Weerasethakul has remained defiantly outside of any studio system, making the films he wants to make, from the beautiful and beguiling queer love story “Tropical Malady” to the Cannes Palme d’Or-winning, avant-garde folk tale “Uncle Boonmee Who Can Recall His Past Lives.” His next project, and first solo feature since 2015’s “Cemetery of Splendor,” is “Memoria.” Shot and set in Colombia with Tilda Swinton — who practically has always seemed fated to star in a Weerasethakul outing — the film is yet another rumination on memory from the “Syndromes and a Century” director. Now, the publication La Tempestad has shared exclusive first images from “Memoria,” and a new interview with the filmmaker, offering the first taste of what’s sure to be another cosmic mystery from Weerasethakul.

Filmed in the mountains of the municipality of Pijao and Bogotá, “Memoria” centers on Swinton as a woman from Scotland who,...

The first installment of Infinite Fest, a monthly column by festival programmer and film critic Eric Allen Hatch, author of the recent “Why I Am Hopeful” article for Filmmaker Magazine, tackling the state of cinema as expressed by North American film festivalsIllustration by Alice Meteignier.The first film festival I ever attended was the Toronto International Film Festival (Tiff) in 1998. I was there, improbably, as a bonus from my retail job as a manager at Video Americain, Baltimore’s late, great rental shop immortalized in John Waters’ Serial Mom. With me was the manager of another Video Americain location, Sean Williams (perhaps now better known as the cinematographer of films like Queen of Earth and Good Time). It was a whirlwind trip on a tight budget: a frighteningly compact puddle-jumper from Delaware to Buffalo; a rental-car jaunt across the border; two days, one night in Toronto.I was young, glum,...

With a seemingly endless amount of streaming options — not only the titles at our disposal, but services themselves — we’ve taken it upon ourselves to highlight the titles that have recently hit platforms. Every week, one will be able to see the cream of the crop (or perhaps some simply interesting picks) of streaming titles (new and old) across platforms such as Netflix, iTunes, Amazon, and more (note: U.S. only). Check out our rundown for this week’s selections below.

The Films of Apichatpong Weerasethakul

If you’re looking for a dreamy weekend, a quartet of the finest films by Thai director Apichatpong Weerasethakul are now available on FilmStruck: Tropical Malady, Syndromes and a Century, Cemetery of Splendor, and his Palme d’Or winner Uncle Boonmee Who Can Recall His Past Lives.

Where to Stream: FilmStruck

The Florida Project (Sean Baker)

How, exactly, did Sean Baker do it? How...

In response to the outcome of a 2015 poll of the 100 Greatest American Films of All Time, BBC Culture recently threw critics a different question. Finding that last year’s results included only six films made since 2000, editors at the arts pages of the venerable broadcaster commissioned a new poll to determine the 100 Greatest Films of the 21st Century. The results are expansive — and intriguing. To get to the consensus favorite, critics reached all the way back to 2001 and David Lynch’s sexy/creepy surrealist noir Mulholland Drive. That film was also on Sight & Sound‘s venerable once-a-decade ranking of the Top 100 Films of All Time which last was conducted in 2012. The three other movies on that list to hail from the new millennium also made the cut (see rundown below).

The British media today is roundly praising the choice of Mulholland, and the list itself whose aim, BBC Culture says,...

Thai filmmaker Apichatpong Weerasethakul has seen his acclaim in the international film community rise steadily since his feature filmmaking debut in 2000, winning awards for a filmography that includes Sud Malad, aka Tropical Malady, Sang Sattawat, aka Syndromes and a Century, and Sud Sanaeha, aka Blissfully Yours. This culminated in Weerasethakul winning the Palme d’Or at the Cannes Film Festival in 2010 for Loong Boonmee raleuk chat, aka Uncle Boonmee Who Can Recall His Past Lives. Having not made a feature film since 2012, Weeresathakul emerged once again at the Cannes Film Festival earlier this year with a brand new feature. Titled Rak ti Khon Kaen, or Cemetery of Splendour, the film’s synopsis is as follows.

Soldiers with a mysterious sleeping sickness are transferred to a temporary clinic in a former school. The memory-filled space becomes a revelatory world for housewife and volunteer Jenjira, as she watches over Itt, a handsome soldier with no family visitors.

Toronto -- Asian films, led by Thai director Apichatpong Weerasethakul's "Syndromes and a Century," dominated the Toronto International Film Festival's best-of-the-decade poll results released Monday.

Weerasethakul's 2006 two-part drama captured the top spot with 53 votes in a poll of 60 film curators, historians and programmers conducted by the festival.

In second place with 49 votes was Jia Zhangke's "Platform," who also grabbed third place for his Venice award winner "Still Life" and its 48 votes.

French filmmaker Claire Denis earned fourth place for "Beau Travail" with 46 votes, followed by Wong Kar-wai's "In the Mood For Love" with 43 votes.

Weerasethakul also earned sixth place for "Tropical Malady," which garnered 38 votes in the TIFF poll.

Romanian director Cristi Puiu was next with "The Death of Mr. Lazarescu" and its 35 votes, the same tally for "Werckmeister Harmonies" from Hungarian filmmaker Bela Tarr.

Rounding out the best-of-the-decade competition was Jean-Luc Godard's "Eloge de l'amour" in...

TORONTO -- "Do you prefer triangles, circles, or squares?" That's a strange question for a job interview, but less so in Syndromes and a Century, where the shape of things and the texture of places does much to determine characters' emotional states. An artful experiment that's imposingly cryptic but comes from a respected filmmaker, it should appeal to its art house niche.

Syndromes takes two passes at its subjects, placing the same characters in two different environments to see what effect the change in scenery has. Not unexpectedly, the more modern setting, bustling and increasingly homogeneous, appears to produce more unhappiness and alienation.

Take one is set in a rural village's medical clinic, a basic building where windows sit open to cross-breezes. In patient shots where the camera never moves and we rarely cut to a new angle, a young female doctor hires a new physician, a shy man proposes marriage, a dentist reveals a hidden side of himself, and two monks get a check-up. Their interactions are dry and punctuated by long looks at plants rustling in the wind, but they have a sly humor that holds our attention.

Jump to a modern medical complex in a large city, where the same doctor is asking the same interviewee the same strange questions. Here, though, the equipment-filled lab is large enough that the camera must for the first time track through it. We move through large reception halls and sterile white rows of dental-care cubicles, hearing the industrial rumble of circulating air rather than the whispers of natural ventilation. What our senses intuit is verified by the characters, who wander forlornly through impassive halls, stare blankly at elevator doors, and -- in the especially sad case of the doctor who was so self-possessed the first time around -- sit immobilized behind desks, waiting for the day's end.

Syndromes is reportedly in part a reflection on the courtship of the filmmaker's parents, and in a few different couplings it captures the precariousness of love that isn't yet set in stone. We see critical junctures approach -- Will the young man follow his lover as she takes an out-of-town job? Will the woman with two suitors choose self-assuredness over meek devotion? -- and can easily imagine them going either way. In the latter setting, however, would-be lovers face hurdles that don't exist in the less cluttered environment.

The pitfalls of modernity are an old lesson, perhaps, but one presented in a fresh and distinctive way by Thai writer-director Apichatpong Weerasethakul, who would rather say what he means with a memorably enigmatic image -- a ventilation tube sucking in the collected smoke of a prosthetics factory, say, or a grassy lawn where a lake once stood -- than invent a plot whose characters can deliver his thoughts second-hand.

SYNDROMES AND A CENTURY (SANG SATTAWAT)

No U.S. Distributor

Kick the Machine Films

Credits:

Director: Apichatpong Weerasethakul

Writer: Apichatpong Weerasethakul

Producers: Apichatpong Weerasethakul, Pantham Thongsang, Charles de Meaux

Executive producers: Simon Field, Keith Griffiths

Director of photography: Sayombhu Mukdeeprom

Production designer: Akekarat Homlaor

Editor: Lee Chatametikool.

Cast: Dr. Tei: Nantarat Sawaddikul

Dr. Nohng: Jaruchai Iamaram

Noom: Sophon Pukanok

Ple: Arkanae Cherkam

Toa: Nu Nimsomboon

Sakda: Sakda Kaewbuadee

MPAA rating PG

Running time -- 105 minutes...