Chanthaly in outdoor double bill with Pee Mak in Bangkok

Lao's first horror film Chanthaly (also the first Lao feature by a female director) will make its Thai debut in an outdoor screening next month as part of the Asean Arts Festival at the Bangkok Art and Culture Centre.

Chanthaly will play on December 14 as the first of an all-horror double feature. It precedes the blockbuster Thai ghost comedy Pee Mak Phra Khanong.

Directed by Mattie Do, Chanthaly premiered at last year's Luang Prabang Film Festival (this year's is set for December 7 to 11). It's since screened in a few other fests, most notably Austin's Fantastic Fest. It made its U.K. premiere earlier this month as part of the Abertoir fest in Wales.

In Bangkok, Chanthaly is part of a three-day festival, Asean Nights: Asean Beyond Frontier, featuring music and films from December 13 to 15.

The Thai-Muslim band Baby Arabia will open the festival, playing its ear-wormy blend of Malay and Arabic folk and rock at 5pm on December 13, followed at 6.30 by the Indonesian childhood drama The Rainbow Troops

Music by the Paradise Bangkok Molum International Band precedes the screenings of Chanthaly and Pee Mak on Saturday, December 14.

And the fest's closing day on December 15 offers music by DJ Maft Dai and a double feature of Chou Davy's Golden Slumbers, a documentary on Cambodia's lost golden age of cinema, and Kongdej Jaturanrasmee's teen Thai culture drama Tang Wong.

You can read more about the festival in an article in The Nation.

And check out the trailer for Chanthaly, embedded below, or if you'd rather, there's the "director's cut" so you can experience the film as Mattie intended – "from the back of a crowded Asian cinema surrounded by 300 people who won't shut up."