Insects in the Backyard, Slice at Torino GLBT Film Festival

Banned in Thailand, Tanwarin Sukkhapisit's Insects in the Backyard, is in the feature film competition at the Torino GLBT Film Festival.

Here's the festival synopsis:

In Blue Velvet, David Lynch reconstructs the trauma of a quiet American country town starting from an ear that has been chopped off and thrown away. In a similar way Thai Sukhaphisit manages to portray an atypical family, in a crescendo of barely repressed tensions, who are living a surreal life masked by the mundane rituals of everyday life. Tanya is a transgender raising her younger "sister" (Jennifer) and her younger "brother" (Johnny). She suffers because people do not accept her for who she is and, obsessed as she is by her own sexuality, she is overcome by desperate loneliness. Soon the younger two will be spurred by their disappointments in love to make a change, but this will cost them dearly. The themes are transgenderism, prostitution and loss, handled in a gentle but visionary way that recalls Tonia of Morrer Como Um Homem by João Pedro Rodrigues. The transgender director plays the main character in a movie that was censored in Bangkok.

Torino also has Kongkiat Komesiri's twisty 2009 crime-thriller Slice (Cheun). It's playing in the fest's Midnight Madness program.

The Torino selection of Insects in the Backyard comes in the midst of legal action taken by Tanwarin, who has filed a petition with the administrative court, seeking to overturn the ban on the film, and allow it to be shown in Thailand for educational purposes.

According to what I've been told, the court is deciding whether to accept the case and a decision is expected sometime after the Songkran Thai New Year holiday.

The Torino GLBT Film Festival runs from April 28 to May 4.

(Via Veen_NT)