Showing 1 - 10 of 19
The world is on fire, but we still have the Oscars
Life, Kong Rithdee, Published on 13/03/2026
» Tight races in several categories as two outstanding American films, Sinners and One Battle After Another, vie for glory with other international titles.
Where the struggle begins
Life, Kong Rithdee, Published on 04/11/2025
» Annemarie Jacir's Palestine 36 reminds us that the question of Palestine didn't begin two years ago but generations before that. Showing at the Tokyo International Film Festival, the film is set in the aftermath of World War I as the European powers carve up the Middle East like a spoiled child slicing his birthday cake: gleefully, arbitrarily, jabbing their fingers on a map with no regard of history or the need of local inhabitants.
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.
And the winner is...
Life, Kong Rithdee, Published on 28/02/2025
» The words and the verdicts on Oscars 2025.
Changing the narrative
Life, Kong Rithdee, Published on 02/09/2022
» A man returns home from work in Malaysia after Covid-19 struck, then gets lost in a bureaucratic labyrinth trying to get government handouts. Another woman finds a job at a factory, but the rules require her to compromise her faith. In Yala, a skater boy sets out in search of a friendly park where he can enjoy his ride. A hijab-wearing K-pop fanatic is getting married to a man who has just converted to Islam. And in a Pattani family, a young man watches his mother being possessed by a spirit, possibly a black-magic attack from his business rival.
Deep in the paradox
Life, Kong Rithdee, Published on 25/05/2022
» In Cairo, a religious student at the prestigious Al-Azhar Islamic University is recruited by secret police to infiltrate a Muslim Brotherhood cell. In Mashad, a holy city in Iran, a serial killer prowls a seedy suburb and strangles head-scarfed prostitutes. In the first film, bloodlust officials torture dissidents with abandon. In the second film, religion is evoked and the name of God is cited as a justification for murder. This begs the obvious question: Will Boy From Heaven be banned in Egypt, and Holy Spider Iran?
BIFF unveils rich line-up
Life, Kong Rithdee, Published on 23/09/2021
» The Busan International Film Festival (BIFF) has unveiled the line-up for its 26th edition to take place on-site from Oct 6-15. Asia's premier gathering of film professionals aims to shake off pandemic-related uncertainties with a slate of over 190 titles, with the focus on Asian cinema as usual. Busan is also pushing for a wider definition of "film festival" by including, for the first time, television series as part of its official programme.
The Year of Great Reckoning
Life, Kong Rithdee, Published on 16/12/2020
» For filmgoers, it was a year of mortal dread. The screen went dark, like a coffin nailed shut, and is still like that in many places. Faith in cinema as we've known it was rattled, challenged, and endangered with a Biblical overtone; it's a plague we're dealing with, after all. It was a year unlike any other we had seen before in the 125 years since cinema was invented. And while that sounds dispiriting, 2020 has also been a "Year of Great Reckoning" during which the equilibrium was recalibrated and the idea of moving images continues, as it should, to evolve.
To dump or not to dump
Life, Kong Rithdee, Published on 31/12/2019
» The title of a new Thai film is a bilingual wordplay: How To Ting is literally translated as "how to dump". That, I think, is sharper than its tired official English title, Happy Old Year. To dump or not to dump -- things and people, mementos and memories -- that is the question. In the film, a young designer who's dressed like a Muji model, and who has just returned from studying in the minimalist-paradise Sweden, plans to dump all useless objects from her maximalist Bangkok house, where she lives with her mother and brother, and to turn it into an all-white, supremely sparse and unapologetically decluttered interior nirvana -- a home office lifted straight from a Scandinavian style book.
Jim Jarmusch's zombies open Cannes
Life, Kong Rithdee, Published on 16/05/2019
» 'Infernal hipsters and their irony." So says a very unhip character in The Dead Don't Die, and of course, what else could it be? Jim Jarmusch's zombie comedy opened the 72nd Cannes Film Festival on Tuesday night with a sort-of infernal hipness that both literalises and subverts the zombie formula -- with mixed results.