Busan fest gets Distortion, Four Stations, Mekong Hotel and Oriole

The latest work of veteran filmmaker Nonzee Nimibutr as well as indie director Boonsong Nakphoo's compilation of rural short stories will have their international premieres at the Busan International Film Festival.

There's also the world premiere of a short film, Oriole, by Kaynipa Polnikorn.

Nonzee's thriller Distortion and Boonsong Nakphoo's Four Stations are part of the completed Busan line-up in addition to the previously announced 36 by Nawapol Thamrongrattanarit, which is in the New Currents competition.

Busan also has Apichatpong Weerasethakul's experimental romantic drama Mekong Hotel, which premiered earlier this year in Cannes and has been making its way around the festival circuit.

Distortion (คน-โลก-จิต, Kon-Loke-Jit) is a thriller in which a psychologist tries to unravel the cause of serial killings in Bangkok. It was developed out of the Thailand Script Project with support from Busan's Asian Project Market. It screened in a wide commercial release in Thailand in May.

Boonsong followed up his 2011 indie feature Poor People the Great with Four Stations (Sathanee See Phak, สถานี 4 ภาค), which screened in June in a limited release at Bangkok's Lido cinemas. It's a compilation of four short stories of poor rural folk by well-known Thai authors from Thailand's "four regions".

The Asian Short Film competition has the world premiere of Oriole by Kaynipa Polnikorn, an Australian-schooled filmmaker who previously worked as a script assistant on Ekachai Uekrongtham’s Pleasure Factory. Oriole is the 15-minute tale of an ageing mother caring for her 26-year-old Asperger's-afflicted son. Meanwhile, Kaynipa is at work on her feature debut Palung, which was pitched earlier this year at the Shanghai International Film Festival's project market.

Also of Thai interest is Poor Folk, a new feature by Taiwanese-Myanmarese director Midi Z, about an ethnic migrant worker’s ill-fated dash across the border to the “promised land” of Thailand.

The 17th Busan International Film Festival runs from October 4 to 13.