Showing 1 - 10 of 18
Living in Thailand's age of impunity
News, Kong Rithdee, Published on 17/01/2026
» There's no place like Thailand. Joyscrolling TikTok and Reels reveals dozens of clips made by international visitors lamenting having to leave our lovely country and return to dreary Europe or joyless America. "Nobody talks about how hard it is to go from this" -- insert a cut of a wonderful beach in Krabi -- "to this"--cut to a drab, damp suburban street somewhere in the West. Add a crying-face emoji. "I want to move here!" the traveller announces. True, everybody loves Thailand.
Here's to all the useful ghosts of our history
Oped, Kong Rithdee, Published on 28/08/2025
» Ghosts are useful because they remind us of the unresolved, the unsettled, the unfinished -- in life, love, politics, or history. The film of the moment hitches onto that idea and takes it far, as far as the Cannes Film Festival, and now it has been picked as Thailand's representative for the Oscars.
The long and brutal voyage
Life, Kong Rithdee, Published on 22/05/2025
» In 1521, when his galleon finally cut through the treacherous Pacific Ocean, when the island of Cebu first appeared in his sight at the edge of the horizon, when its slender coconut trees and thatched huts and maybe its half-naked inhabitants came into view, when he lays eyes on all of these, what went through the mind of Ferdinand Magellan?
Paradise lost
Life, Kong Rithdee, Published on 04/04/2025
» In Grand Tour, Miguel Gomes' beguiling travelogue set in 1917, a British diplomat in Burma journeys across Southeast Asia, hopping from country to country, to avoid an encounter with his fiancée. Edward (Gonçalo Waddington) is a colonial officer who, struck by an inexplicable premonition or a case of cold feet, decides to flee Mandalay just before his sweetheart Molly (Crista Alfaiate) is due to arrive. He boards a ship to Singapore, then a train to Bangkok -- it derails on the way, but still makes it -- and onwards to Saigon, Manila, Osaka and Chongqing. Molly, pursuing him, would repeat a more or less similar route.
2024 movie moments
Life, Kong Rithdee, Published on 17/12/2024
» The past year was surprisingly fantastic for Thai cinema, and a pretty good one for the rest of the world too.
Return to paradise
Life, Kong Rithdee, Published on 13/01/2022
» At Maya Bay, hawk-eyed park officials patrol the sandy stretch, whistles at the ready. It was a gorgeous morning last Thursday, just days after the fabled beach on Phi Phi Leh Island had reopened after three years of closure, and the 300 or so holidaymakers, masked or otherwise, were ambling or striking catwalk poses on the pillow-soft sand, awestruck by the emerald splendour around them.
A long crusade against healthcare woes
Life, Kong Rithdee, Published on 16/04/2021
» Colectiv, a Romanian documentary film nominated for two Oscars, watches in terror as the Romanian healthcare system practically collapses before the camera. The film elicits a series of gasps, as one shocking revelation leads to another, and another: procurement frauds, bureaucratic incompetence, corruption, nepotism, murder, mass bribery, healthcare mafia, maggots crawling on the head of a patient -- a living patient -- and finally, an election whose preposterous results ring too many familiar bells.
Asean on screen
Life, Kong Rithdee, Published on 02/09/2020
» Ahead of the BAFF featuring Southeast Asian movies plus Chinese and Japanese titles, Life spoke with two filmmakers about their work
A note on Thailand Biennale
Life, Kong Rithdee, Published on 02/01/2019
» One recent morning at Nopphrat Thara beach, the high tide flooded the lower part of a strange, interwoven structure. Rising from the blue water of the bay, it looked like an island, a new, unmapped island of Krabi visible from this popular spot where tourists visit and board tour boats to outlying islands.
Rhapsody in black and white
Life, Kong Rithdee, Published on 13/12/2018
» This is plain simple: Roma must be seen on the big screen.