Panorama/Late Night screenings for Reincarnate in Buenos Aires

The 12th Buenos Aires International Independent Film Festival (BAFICI) opened on Thursday and among the 422 features and shorts in the line-up is Thunska Pansittivorakul's provocative experimental romantic thriller and documentary Reincarnate.

It's screening in the Panorama / Late Night section alongside such films as Black Dynamite, Brillante Mendoza's dark and bloody Kinatay and Rob Zombie's The Haunted World of El Superbeasto.

Genius programming if you ask me.

Full of symbolism about Thailand's red-yellow-blue color-coded politics, which are poised for a meltdown, Reincarnate is a taboo breaker and leaves nothing untouched.

Here's what the festival's website has to say about it:

Believe it or not, less than a year ago Thailand passed a bill that forces all films to meet six strict requisites in order to be screened in the country. The rule, detailed in the sign that opens Thunska Pansittivorakul’s new film, aims at “preserving” the people’s “moral values”. Pansittivorakul’s reaction –after his previous film This Area Is Under Quarantine was only screened at Rotterdam because of this law – was subversive, vital and primary: he made a film that breaks each and everyone of those rules. But the incredible thing about Reincarnate, and what’s most amazing about his director’s talent, is that the film exists beyond this introduction, which goes parallel to any justification. Yes, indeed, the film goes on slowly and almost invisibly through a non-traditional path of denunciation; it follows two lovers who go on a trip to an island where past and present melt together, among tourist rides and time outs in hotel rooms where you feel you got there either too early or too late. Although, every now and again, the camera does get there on time, even if that doesn’t please the promoters of such a stupidly anachronic law, and the screen fills up with (for now) forbidden Thai sex.

Reincarnate was previously screened at the International Film Festival Rotterdam and at ICI Berlin.

BAFICI runs until April 18.