Wonderful Town at New York's New Directors/New Films

New York's Museum of Modern Art and the Film Society of Lincoln Center have announced the program for this year's New Directors/New Films, and among the 26 titles is Wonderful Town by Aditya Assarat, which was recently picked up for U.S. distribution by Kino International.

The romantic drama set in post-tsunami Phuket was a winner of the Tiger Award at the International Film Festival Rotterdam, screened at the recent Berlin International Film Festival, and won the New Currents Award at last year's Pusan International Film Festival. It is the first solo feature film by Aditya, a hard-working young, U.S.-schooled Thai director who's known for his short films, like Motorcycle, and the colloborative effort on the experimental reality drama, 3 Friends.

Here is the synopsis for Wonderful Town, via Ioncinema:

With an unerring feeling for lives on hold, director Aditya Assarat creates an atmosphere of guardedness, uneasiness, and mystery to highlight the story of two lonely people attempting a fragile emotional connection. The film's saturated colors reinforce the lifelessness of a location that suffered immensely during the tsunami three years ago. An architect from Bangkok pulls up to a motel in a near-ghost town of deserted streets and beaches. His obscured past finds symmetry in the repressed history of the girl he meets and pursues. Each is trying to discover how to give way and function in the present. This quiet narrative of suggestion and hushed emotions has an unexpected denouement that is as shocking as it is earned.