Look of Silence, Y/Our Music set for Salaya Doc

The Look of Silence, an award-winning followup to Oscar-nominated The Act of Killing about genocide in Indonesia, and the SXSW entry Y/Our Music, which covers on-the-fringe Thai musicians, will be the opening and closing entries of the fifth Salaya International Documentary Film Festival, which runs from March 21 to 28 at the Thai Film Archive in Salaya, Nakhon Pathom, and from March 24 to 27 at the Bangkok Art and Culture Center.

Noteworthy films include Southeast Asian Cinema – When the Rooster Crows, covering directors Brillante Mendoza from the Philippines, Garin Nugroho from Indonesia, Eric Khoo from Singapore and Pen-ek Ratanaruang from Thailand, and Flowers of Taipei: Taiwan New Cinema, which traces the influence of such filmmakers as Edward Yang and Hou Hsiao-hsien. Among the filmmakers and artists testifying are Apichatpong Weerasethakul – he's in a trailer embedded below.

Other special screenings include Frederick Wiseman's National Gallery, Love Is All: 100 Years of Love and Courtship, featuring rare footage from the British Film Insitute and Yorkshire Film Archive; No Word for Worry, covering the fading "sea gypsy" culture of Myanmar; and The Wages of Resistance: Narita Stories, which is a followup to a long-running series of 1960s documentaries about farmers opposed to the ever-expanding Tokyo airport.

Also, there will be the controversial Diving Bell: The Truth Shall Not Sink with Sewol. The film, which caused an uproar at the Busan fest, will have a Q-and-A with the directors following a one-off BACC screening.

Acclaimed Dutch-Indonesian auteur Leonard Retel Helmrich, known for his "single-shot cinema" technique, is this year's "director in focus". Four of his award-winning films will be shown: Eye of the Day, Shape of the Moon, Position Among the Stars and Promised Paradise. He'll also conduct a masterclass for registered participants and be on hand after some screenings for a talk.

And the centerpiece of Salaya Doc is the Asean competition, which this year has seven entries, both shorts and features, from Cambodia, Indonesia, Myanmar, the Philippines, Singapore, Thailand and Vietnam. Most of that program is detailed over at Bangkok Cinema Scene.

The schedule has just been completed and can be found on the Salaya Doc Facebook page. Also, it is possible to reserve seats online. You can do so at bit.ly/booking-for-salayadoc5.