This year's Far East Film Festival in Udine, Italy, features a generous portion of Thai films in just about every flavor: horror, action, romantic drama and a bit of comedy.The festival opens on April 18 with back-to-back screenings of Hideo Nakata's Death Note films: Death Note, Death Note: The Last Name and the spin-off sequel, L change the WorLd (which was filmed in Thailand, and features a Thai character and a One-Two-GO 747 jumbo jet from Thailand).
First up on April 19 is Kongdej Jaturanrasamee's Handle Me With Care, making its European premiere. This romantic comedy and road movie is about a three-armed man who forms an uneasy relationship with a large breasted young woman. It looks to be headed on a run of festivals after screening last month in Hong Kong.
The award-winning boxing drama Muay Thai Chaiya will be featured in a midnight showing the night of April 19.
Pongpat Wachrabungjong's directorial debut, Me ... Myself, starring Ananda Everingham, makes its European premiere on April 21.
Horror Day in Udine is April 23, and what a lineup there is from Thailand: Five Star's puzzling The Screen at Kamchanod, the slick and bloody Body from GMM Tai Hub and Sahamongkol's emergent cult hit, Sick Nurses.
Closing out the Thai selection on April 25 will be the heartfelt, award-winning teen romantic drama, The Love of Siam, with writer-director Chukiat Sakweerakul in attendance for the European premiere.
Other films of note include action-packed American-Vietnamese martial arts film The Rebel starring Tom Yum Goong's Johnny Nguyen -- a hit at last year's Bangkok International Film Festival -- Oxide Pang's solo offering The Detective, starring Aaron Kwok, and Quickie Express from Indonesia.
(Thanks Lea!)
The thai rapresentation at Udine this year is bigger than always. Udine's festival is the biggest festival of popular eastern cinema, for this reason we can't never find wellknow movies by famous Asiatic directors (Johnny To and directors in retrospective are an exception). I'm waiting for, above all, Mongkolthong and Sakweerakul movies.
ReplyDeleteThe Screen is a strange film. I'll be interested to see what other folks make of it.
ReplyDeleteI know that this movie isn't of easy understanding above all in the last minutes when (I heard) it's full of dramatic turns of events. But this movie is also based on a true story or, to be more exact, a legend (now I'm thinking like a pragmatic western one, like I am) that scares but not to such a point that the spectator will not succeed to sleep. For my happiness some of thai's dichotomies remain to their place, such as legend/reality and old/new. That'll be enough?
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