Concrete Clouds float over London in Thai Indie Fest

U.K. independent movie distributor Day for Night is releasing Lee Chatametikool's award-winning drama Concrete Clouds (ภวังค์รัก, Phawang Rak) as part of the first Thai Indie Fest in London, which will screen several other award-winning indie Thai titles over the next month or so.

In fact, Thai Indie Fest got underway yesterday with a screening of Nawapol Thamrongrattanarit's 36. Other entries are Tongpong Chantarangkul's road trip tale I Carried You Home, Aditya Assarat's post-tsunami romance Wonderful Town and Anocha Suwichakornpong's social drama Mundane History.

Up next on June 9 is I Carried You Home (Padang Besar, ปาดังเบซา), about two estranged sisters who are forced back together by the death of their mother, for a tense cross-country road trip with the corpse in the back of an ambulance. It screens at 8pm on June 9 at COG ARTSpace.

Wonderful Town, in which an architect planning a new development in an isolated town hit by the tsunami, strikes up a relationship with a hotel manager, screens at 7.15pm on Tuesday, June 23 at the Proud Archivist.

Concrete Clouds, which is set in Bangkok during 1997 financial crisis, brings together two estranged brothers after the suicide of their father. While the older brother (Ananda Everingham) tries to get things in order at home and attempts to reconnect with an old girlfriend, the aimless younger brother strikes up a relationship with a lonely neighbor girl.

It is the feature directorial debut for Lee, who is well known for his work as a film editor, particularly his collaborations with Apichatpong Weeraesthakul, most recently on Cemetery of Splendour (รักที่ขอนแก่น, Rak Ti Khon Kaen), which premiered at last month's Cannes Film Festival.

There are several events to mark the release of Concrete Clouds, with a screening at noon on June 27 at the Rich Mix with Lee doing a post-screening talk. He'll also be on hand for a show at 8.10pm on June 28 at the Ritzy and 7.30pm on July at the Regent Street Cinema. Concrete Clouds is also showing at the Watershed in Bristol from June 26 to July 2.

And Thai Indie Fest wraps up with Mundane History, a slow-burn social-class drama about the paralyzed son of a wealthy family being cared for by a male nurse from a rural upbringing. The screening is at 7pm on July 6 at the Regent Street Cinema.

"The Thai independent film scene is thriving, with a new generation of filmmakers coming to the fore. Often carrying undertones of social, political or economic uncertainty and realities in contemporary Thailand, common themes emerge – memory and imagination, love and loss, decay and regeneration," Day for Night says. "Thai Indie Fest will celebrate some of the freshest filmmaking from the Thai independent scene with a season of award‐winning debut features by Thai 'second new wave' directors."

All the films, winners of multiple awards in Thailand and abroad, share several other common threads, mainly Lee himself, an award-winning film editor who helped shape Mundane History and Wonderful Town. I'm pretty sure he was post-production supervisor on 36 and lash me with noodles if he wasn't involved somehow with I Carried You Home.

Also, there's actress Apinya Sakuljareonsuk, who stars in both Concrete Clouds and I Carried You Home. She just recently won a Tukkata Tong Award for best supporting actress for her work in Concrete Clouds.