Fall film festival roundup

The fall film festival season is upon us, with several fests coming up with Thai films in their lineups.

First up there's the Chicago International Film Festival, October 5-19. It has Pen-Ek Ratanaruang's Invisible Waves, the quirky Midnight My Love, starring Petchtai Wongkamlao as a sad-sack cabbie and Apichatpong Weerasethakul's Syndromes and a Century, which looks set to hit every major film festival in the world and will likely never be screened in Thailand - at least not for a long while.

Syndromes is also at the biggie, the Pusan International Film Festival, October 12-20. It's one of two Thai films in the program, the other being the boarding-school thriller, Dorm. The Pusan website is a bitch to navigate. The best way I found of getting around on it was to select "Screening schedule section", which gives a list that can be easily scrolled through.

And both Syndromes and Waves are at the London Film Festival, October 18-November 2. London also has A Bite of Love, which should be a comedy vampire thriller, but it's not. Instead, it's a weeper about a little girl (Grace Techaratanaprasert) who adopts a fluffy little puppy. I have the sinking feeling that Bite is going to come back around during awards season early next year in Thailand.

Bite is also at the Tokyo International Film Festival, October 21-29, which is going for decidely lighter fair from Thailand. It also has the hilarious Noo-Hin: The Movie.

Note that this roundup doesn't include the 4th World Film Festival of Bangkok, October 11-23, which has some Thai films (some obscure choices), but I'm still trying to track down information about them.

Kaiju Shakedown has a look at more Asian offerings at Pusan and Chicago and elsewhere.


(Cross-published at Rotten Tomatoes)