Showing 1 - 7 of 7
The politics of taste in our election season
Oped, Kong Rithdee, Published on 26/12/2025
» Hell is other people's tastes. Hell is when we passionately hate what people unconditionally love. Hell is when we can't fathom how anyone on the face of the earth can like someone or something we find revolting -- a food, a film, a style, an opening ceremony, a politician, a president.
Thai film ‘A Useful Ghost’ wins Cannes prize
Kong Rithdee, Published on 22/05/2025
» CANNES — The Thai film Pee Chai Dai Ka (A Useful Ghost) has won the Grand Prix at Critics’ Week, a parallel section of the Cannes Film Festival, becoming the first Thai film to ever win the prize.
Will gentrification respect city's people?
Oped, Kong Rithdee, Published on 28/06/2023
» We've lived for over a century in the shadow of grandeur: near the Customs House, known to Thais as rongpasi. "We" means my maternal family and the community of Haroon Mosque. Each day before sunrise, the muezzin's sing-song call rings through the neighbourhood, carried on the river wind towards the Mandarin Oriental Hotel, the French Embassy and Assumption Cathedral.
Girlhood and a city in flux
Life, Kong Rithdee, Published on 12/10/2021
» An Indonesian teen drama and Cambodian prize-winner shine at Busan Film Festival.
Humanity over bureaucracy
Life, Kong Rithdee, Published on 22/11/2019
» Do we need a feature film about the Tham Luang Cave rescue? We already know the characters, the set-up, the conflict, the ending: The 12 youngsters and their coach were saved, transported out unconscious from the flooded grottos in Chiang Rai by a team of elite divers, against the odds of natural or man-made calamities. Miracles, as the world acknowledges, have already been performed. Tears have been shed and a tragedy -- the death of a Thai Navy Seal -- has been mourned.
PM's plan to end gridlock is pie in sky
News, Kong Rithdee, Published on 18/08/2018
» In three months, the angels will return to the clogged thoroughfares of Lost-Angel-ist. Prime Minister Prayut Chan-o-cha, one who's never shy of making the impossible still impossible, has set his sights on, gasp, fixing Bangkok traffic, which is like untangling the Mobius strip or finding the end of Ariadne's thread. The soundbite-ready part of the PM's order is that he wants to see "tangible results in three months", which promptly sent related authorities scurrying in all directions to make it real.