Showing 1 - 10 of 27
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.
Agents of change
Life, Kong Rithdee, Published on 21/05/2025
» Awash with saturated colour and steeped in Brazil's history of authoritarianism, Kleber Mendoça Filho's The Secret Agent has emerged as a serious contender for the Palme d'Or. A former film critic, programmer and now a leading voice in Brazilian cinema, Mendoça Filho's fourth feature -- and his third in Cannes Competition -- is a political thriller, a tribute to disappeared dissidents, and a deft ode to the way memory is passed through time and technology.
Cannes 2025: What's on our watch list
Life, Kong Rithdee, Published on 13/05/2025
» The 78th edition of Europe's biggest film festival starts today. We take a look at some notable titles across different sections -- Competition, Un Certain Regard, Directors' Fortnight and Critics' Week -- including a Thai film.
A vintage year for Thai cinema?
Life, Kong Rithdee, Published on 25/12/2023
» There were cheers of jubilation and gasps of disbelief as Thai cinema found itself awash with excitement in 2023. This has been the most successful year for mainstream Thai movies in a decade, a box-office triumph far exceeding all expectations. To many, the 2023 coup de theatre calls for celebration. "We are back!" cried optimistic pundits. But also: "Really? Is it just a one-time cinema party and can we keep the ball rolling?"
The afterlife of Mitr Chaibancha
Life, Kong Rithdee, Published on 06/10/2023
» In an abrupt moment of life's brutal script, Mitr Chaibancha fell to his death from a helicopter ladder on Oct 8, 1970. He was filming Insee Thong (Golden Eagle), playing an anti-communist masked hero, when he slipped from the rung and plunged to the ground in Pattaya. That same evening, his body was transported to Wat Kae Nang Loeng. Thousands of people, unable to believe that Thailand's most famous actor was really, tragically dead, amassed impromptu at the temple and demanded that his corpse be raised from the coffin and shown to the public.
Harry takes Bangkok in Styles
Kong Rithdee, Published on 13/03/2023
» The accessory du jour was the fluffy pink boa. The color scheme was hot pink - pink pants, pink boots, pink cowboy hats, pink eye-shadow, pink hijabs. Or if not pink, then anything in the tooth-aching shades of the rainbow. It was a lively, joyous sight on Saturday night, a show of hot-colored aesthetics in a defiant contrast to the brutalist concrete skeleton of Rajamangala Stadium. How I wish concrete-mad Bangkok could look like this every day!
The vagabond returns
Life, Kong Rithdee, Published on 20/01/2023
» A film once overlooked and misunderstood may have found its moment many years later, the work's peculiar vibrations finally detected and at last appreciated.
Pandemonium
Life, Kong Rithdee, Published on 30/09/2022
» The first shot of Athena will be discussed in every writing about the film. A bravura choreography of movement that begins with an intimate close-up of a face and ends, after 10 blood-rushing minutes, with an explosion of revolutionary rage -- a la Les Miserables and Do You Hear The People Sing? transported to a predominantly-Muslim Paris suburb -- that opening shot is so hypnotising and immersive in its non-stop kineticism that we're led to forgive that it's also an earnest show-off, a proud enshrinement of style and attitude over everything else. Romain Gavras, a filmmaker known for making music videos for Jay Z and M.I.A, will cement that approach with many similar shots throughout the film -- long, seemingly uninterrupted shots with parkour camerawork full of angry bodies -- more than enough for aspiring filmmakers of the world to slobber over.
Rebel without a cause
Life, Kong Rithdee, Published on 21/05/2021
» She came, she provoked, she burned, she left pools of blood and bits of brain on the school yard while laughing her pretty head off all the way to purgatory. She's Nanno, the demon child with Lolita's freckles and the Joker's face-splitting grin. She's the headline girl from the hit Thai series Girl From Nowhere which, since the May 7 release of its Season 2 on Netflix, has made it to the top-10 chart in many Asian countries and summited the algorithm in Thailand, Vietnam and the Philippines. In China, the series' hashtag was for a time trending on Weibo (Nanno's Thai school uniform also inspires Chinese cosplayers).
A sick man, on a tour of hospital hell
Life, Kong Rithdee, Published on 07/05/2021
» The Death Of Mr. Lazarescu came out in 2005 and cemented the cinematic potency of the Romanian New Wave and their brand of droll, deadpan and relentlessly realistic movies about life in the ex-socialist state. The film premiered at the Cannes Film Festival 2005 and now, 16 years later, The Death Of Mr. Lazarescu is buried deep in the algorithm of Netflix. But it's there if you look, and I'm bringing it up today because its story of public healthcare apocalypse and accumulated absurdities experienced by a patient trying to find a hospital bed seems more timely, more wickedly serendipitous, than ever.